













o V 




%. "' 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



25it$f of Current i^ijftorp 



PICKED UP IN THE WEST AND THE SOUTH, DURING THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, 
FOR THE INDEPENDENT, THE CONGREGATIONALIST, AND THE ADVANCE, 



BY /,.■ 

JOSEPH E. ROY. 




BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 
Congregational SunUagsScfjooI anU PufaltsJ)tng $iOctctg. 



1 1 bi 

■Tfs? 



Copyright, 1888, 
By Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. 



Electrotyped and Printed 
By Stanley <5r» Usher, Ijl Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass, 



To Mrs. Pilgrim, 

who, during all the years of this pilgrimage, 

has tarried by the stuff, 

bearing the double burden of the home, 

rearing the family, 

and preserving in growing volumes these original letters, 

this book, the substance of them, 

is gratefully inscribed 

By Pilgrim. 



PREFACE. 



How did I come to take the name Pilgrim ? Of Huguenot and New 
Jersey lineage, a son of the west, all the Pilgrim blood in me comes 
from a Yankee step-mother ; but they which are of faith the same are 
the children of Abraham. Then my mode of life for these twenty- 
seven years, as superintendent of missions in the west and in the south, 
calling me to all parts of the country, has been that of a pilgrim. Mov- 
ing about during this epoch-making period I have sought to catch some 
of its peculiar features by a sort of instantaneous photography ; and for 
all of this time the press of The hidependent, or of The Congregation- 
alist, or of The Advance has been printing them. Out of these letters, 
seven hundred of them, I have sifted material which seemed to have a 
permanent interest. As they cover the period of the Kansas Struggle, 
the War of the Rebellion, the process of civil and moral reconstruction, 
and of the phenomenal development of our new territories, they afford 
glimpses of the real life of those times in which history was rapidly 
made — a history big with destiny. These are not war letters, but 
sketches, rather, showing what the men and the women were doing at 
home during the war to give material and moral support to the gov- 
ernment and the army, and what they have since been doing for our 
country in supplementing the war and in maturing the national life. 

It is a royal hospitality which Pilgrim has enjoyed every-where these 
many years. This title has often made ready for him a welcome where 
he had supposed himself a stranger. For all of this he once more 
expresses thanks, as he invites these and other friends to tread again 
with him some of the paths of this Pilgrim's progress. 



CONTENTS. 



PERIOD I. 
BEFORE THE WAR, 1857-60. 

FAGB. 

•'Bleeding Kansas." — A State with a History.- The Missouri 
Plan in North Carolina and in Kentucky 11 

PERIOD II. 

DURING THE WAR. 1861-63. 

The South Pushing at the North. — Emancipation Memorial. — 
Soldiers from Western Colleges. — Trip to the Army. — United 
States Sanitary Disbursements. — Surgery in the Army. — 
Emancipation Meeting. — Boston Tract Society in the Army. 
— A May Anniversary in New York. — The Morgan Raid. — 
First Sanitary Fair 23 

PERIOD III. 
DURING THE WAR (Continued), 1864-65. 

The Virginia Union Flag. — Death of Owen Lovejoy. — Triennial 
Convention on the State of the Country. — Deaths of Colonels 
Mulligan and John A. Bross. — Tour Among the Bushwhack- 
ers. — Quantrell's Raid. — Lincoln's Second Election. — Plot 
to Release Rebel Prisoners at Chicago. — Illinois Responds to 
the Call for Five Hundred Thousand More. — Blatchford's 
Sanitary Report. — Revolutionary Incident. — Turner and Pratt 
go to Missouri. — Rebel Prisoners in Camp Douglas. — Rich- 
mond Fallen. — Lee's Surrender. — Lincoln Assassinated. — 
The National Pageant. — Chicago's National Fair. — "Little 
Tad." — Boston National Council. — American Missionary 
Association Accepts the Trust Proffered by the Boston Council 52 



8 CONTENTS. 

PERIOD IV. 
AT THE END OF THE WAR. — TOUR THROUGH THE SOUTH, 1865. 

Mammoth Cave. — Freedmen's Bureau and Bank. — Knoxville. 

— Chattanooga. — Battle-fields. — Mississippi Legislature. — 
Natchez. — New Orleans. — Sea Island Negroes. — Alabama 
Legislature. — Black Heroes. — Charleston Shelled and Burned. 

— Emancipation Celebration in Charleston. — Virginia Legis- 



lature. — Generals Thomas and Fisk 



PERIOD V. 

AFTER THE WAR. — TO THE FIRE, 1866-71. 

Soldiers from Congregational Churches in the West. — "Blue 
Laws" of South Carolina. — Iowa Quarter-Centennial. — 
Chicago Christian Cornmission. — Roll of Boston Council : 
Analysis of it. — Illinois Responds to President Johnson. — 
Four Western War Books. — Abraham Lincoln, "Surveyor." 

— Grinnell. — Quarter-Millennial of Plymouth Rock .... 109 

PERIOD VI. 

FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL, 1871-76. 

The Chicago Fire. — National Council. — Tour in Connecticut. — 
The Ohio an Ancient Highway. — An Exploration of Colorado. 

— Among the Dakotas. — The Boston Fire. — Philo Carpenter. 

— Lake Superior. — Lone Star State. — The Woods of North- 
em Michigan 129 

PERIOD VII. 

AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. 

The Centennial. — The Gilded Dead-fall. — Transfer South . . 151 

PERIOD VIII. 
IN THE SOUTH, 1878-79. 

Atlanta. — Emancipation Day. — Talladega, Ala. — Chattanooga. 

— Mardi Gras and Washington's Birthday in New Orleans. — 
The Acadians in Louisiana. — San Antonio. — Corpus Christi. 

— Alabama Anniversary Week. — Hampton, Va. — Fisk Uni- 
versity 156 



CONTENTS. 9 

PERIOD IX. 

IN THE SOUTH, i88c^82. 

Berea. — National Cemeteries at the South. — Prohibition in 
North Carolina. — East Tennessee. — Anniston. — Memphis. — 
The Congregational Methodists. — A July Vacation. — Atlanta 
Cotton Exposition. — Crossing Boston Mountain. — Confederate 
Memorial Day in New Orleans. — Presbyterian Missions in the 
South. — North and South: Some Things in Common. — 
Colored Work of Southern Churches i8i 

PERIOD X. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1883-84. 

Miss Willard in the South. — Secretary Dunning. — The New 
Birmingham. — Canon Farrar. — Concord Council. — Mountain 
Work. — Wesleyans and German Reformed in North Carolina. 

— The Georgia Association in Charleston, S. C 217 

PERIOD XI. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1885. 

Itinerary from Austin to Corpus Christi. — Black Men and Big 
Pastures in Texas. — Negroes in the New Orleans Exposition. 

— Grant's Canal Caving in 239 

PERIOD XII. 

BACK IN THE WEST, 1885-87. 

Transition. — Woman's Work for Woman at the South. — Meth- 
odist Episcopal Work Among the Freedmen. — Dakota Indian 
Conference. — In Colorado. — New West Commission. — Slater 
Fund. — Centennial of Territory of the North-west and of 
Louisiana Purchase. — Georgia's Prison and Chain Gang for 
Missionaries and Teachers. — An Old Experiment in Indian 
Land Severalty. — The Martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy . . 252 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



PERIOD I. 

BEFORE THE WAR, 1857-60. 

"Bleeding Kansas." — A State with a History. — The Missouri Plan 
in North Carolina and Kentucky. 



LETTER I. 

" BLEEDING KANSAS." 

Lawrence, Kansas, September 28, 1857. 
Here I am on the soil of "Bleeding Kansas." I came 
on to arrange the affairs of my deceased brother, Aaron 
D. Roy, who had settled in this country that he might 
have a hand in the free state cause. He was soon 
enlisted among the Kansas defenders, and was in several 
encounters under General Lane. He was in the company 
that was captured at Hickory Point and thrust into prison 
at Lecompton by the United States troops, who are now 
made to serve the "border ruffians." After some weeks 
in this vile place, he dug out and escaped to the woods, 
afterwards finding harborage in the home of S. Y. Lum, 
that earnest patriot, who was the first minister from the 
east to reach the territory. The exposure of that impris- 
onment had so worn upon my brother's health that when 



12 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

attacked by fever he soon succumbed. They tell me that 
his funeral, directed by the Oread Guards, was the largest 
the town of Lawrence has ever seen. 

Repairing to his grave, was it any wonder that I should 
kneel upon its fresh earth and renewedly devote myself to 
the cause of the slave } I became an abolitionist when a 
little child, through a mob. William T. Allen, son of a 
slave-holding minister in Huntsville, Alabama, one of the 
Lane Seminary " rebels," out from Oberlin on a lecturing 
tour, had come to our town of Mount Gilead, Ohio, to be 
entertained at my father's house. There a mob broke up 
his lecturing, and as he was returning with my mother and 
her little boy to our house, egg-shells filled with tar were 
thrown upon them. Before his lectures I had never heard 
of the slave,*and had never seen a black person, but there 
and then I date the birth of my abolitionism. As it has 
been proposed to abrogate that old landmark of freedom, the 
Missouri Compromise, and let slavery into these new terri- 
tories, I had to preach in my Plymouth pulpit : " Cursed 
be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark." When 
Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott decision, claimed 
as the sentiment of the fathers of the republic that 
" black men had no rights which white men were bound to 
respect," I had to preach : " Cursed be he that per- 
verteth the judgment of the stranger." And when this 
town of Lawrence was sacked and Charles Sumner was 
assassinated, I had to preach on " Kansas : Her Struggle 
and Her Defence." The text was Daniel 1 1 : 1 1, 40 : " And 
the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall 
come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the 
north : . . . And at the time of the end shall the king of the 
south push at him : and the king of the north shall come 
against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horse 



BEFORE THE WAR. 1 3 

men, and with many ships ; and he shall enter into the 
countries, and shall overflow and pass over." The sermon 
predicted : " If the south still persists in rushing this 
nation on to civil war, ' at the time of the end ' of for- 
bearance, the north will come 'like a whirlwind, with 
chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships,' and will 
sweep from Mason and Dixon's line to Florida, from New 
York all around the coast to the Gulf." 

After preaching in Mr. Lum's church on national 
affairs, Governor Robinson said that I must go out with 
him on a political canvass among the settlements. The 
free state men who had heretofore repudiated the bogus 
territorial government had now decided to vote. The elec- 
tion would come in a month. The treasurer of the state 
of Massachusetts, T. J. Marsh, Esq., who was also the 
treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Society, was present and 
was going along. It was important to lay before the peo- 
ple the true issue. So I joined their company ; and for 
three weeks, with printed placards ahead, we went lectur- 
ing day by day, the statesmen talking politics and the 
churchman preaching abolitionism. We had no disturb- 
ance along the way except when going to our appointment 
at Fort Scott, when we had to turn back upon learning 
that the border ruffians had possession of that strong- 
hold. Striking off in another way, we got lost and were 
driving on far into the night. At last, following the bark- 
ing of dogs, we came upon a settler's cabin. All the 
family were in bed, and nearly all were sick. After a 
repast of slapjacks and pork, we were allowed to lie down 
on our own buffalo robes with our feet to the fire. In the 
morning, giving the woman a five-dollar gold piece, we 
started on to our next appointment. The friends there 
finding where we had been lodged, told us that the man 



14 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

was one of the biggest border ruffians in all the region, 
and that if he had not been sick, and had known what 
game he had within reach, he certainly would have routed 
ou^ the neighbors and bagged it all. Getting back to 
Lawrence, the people must needs give us a reception. It 
was an open-air meeting, with Jim Lane for presiding offi- 
cer. Coming to introduce the young Chicago pastor, he 
said : " He 's the fighting preacher ; them 's the sort we 
love." 

I have had ample opportunity to see the people and to 
learn their spirit. They are united in the policy of voting 
at the October election. Keeping aloof from the sham 
government, they have made it appear the farcical thing 
it is. Its taxes could not be collected ; its laws could not 
be enforced. When their ballot boxes were stolen and 
carried over into Missouri, they declared that they would 
not vote again until those boxes were brought back and a 
fair election secured. Nobly have they stood these two 
years for self-government. They have suffered in their 
personal interests rather than resort to the bogus authori- 
ties for their rights. They have lived here without jus- 
tices of the peace, without constables and sheriffs, without 
courts, without registers. That a heterogeneous popula- 
tion scattered over a vast region have not only been a law 
unto themselves, but have successfully resisted a merciless 
tyranny, is a new proof of the inherent capacity of the 
people to govern themselves. And now when the Presi- 
dent and the governor have promised to restore the ballot 
box and to assure a fair election, when the test oath of 
obedience to the fugitive slave law is abolished, and when 
the tax-paying qualification for voting is removed, the peo- 
ple resolve to try these fair offers and to assume the gov- 
ernment which had been wrested from them, or make a 



BEFORE THE WAR. 



15 



new one in us stcccl. But this was the last thing that the 
administration had desired. Supposing that the free state 
men would not \uLe at all, it had thus thrown the doors 
wide open so that it might be said that they were factious 
and hypocritical in their clamor for freedom. 

The population of Kansas is estimated here at one hun- 
dred thousand, and the immigration of this season at forty 
thousand, the most of which is free state, and will be cut 
off from voting by the six months' stipulation. Every- 
where they are confident of success, if not in the October 
election, yet in a final victory for freedom. It has not 
been in vain that the cause of Kansas was espoused in the 
east. It has been that general movement that has saved 
this territory for freedom. The Emigrant Aid Society, 
which invested thousands of dollars in mills, the first 
want of a new country, and in school-houses ; and also the 
National Kansas Committee, which sent seven hundred 
and fifty boxes of clothing, arms, and provisions to the 
value of several hundred thousand dollars ; the thundering 
of the press and the pulpit and the platform ; the general 
burst of sympathy that could not be cut off by the block- 
ade of the national highways, — all these have conspired 
to save Kansas from the doom of slavery. It has been 
pleasant to hear the people express such views and tell 
how much good this aid has done. It was but our duty, 
for their cause was ours. 

But you ask me about the sufferings of the Kansas 
people. Were the reports exaggerations, abolition lies .-• 
I have taken great pains in this matter, and am con- 
strained to say that scarcely the half has been told. In 
the distant settlements along the streams there were 
enough such incidents unpublished to fill a volume. Every 
cabin we entered would tell us some new tale of house 



1 6 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

robbing and burning, of stealing horses and cattle, of 
destruction of crops, of personal insult and injury, of con- 
stant fear and alarm. Many had been driven out of the 
country after their all had been taken from them. In the 
wake of the invading guerrillas followed the pro-slavery 
settlers, appropriating their neighbors' chickens, cattle, 
hogs, and grain. As I have stood upon the ashes of hun- 
dreds of homes ; as I have stood by the graves of the 
martyrs, Phillips, Roberts, Dow, Hoyt, Barber, and Shom- 
ber, the last of whom died saying, " I give myself a 
cheerful sacrifice on the altar of Kansas freedom " ; as I 
have heard the tales of outrage from men and women, my 
realization of these facts has made my indignation burn, 
and I have wondered how the freemen here could have the 
moral courage to stand as they did only on the defensive, 
and not to annihilate their savage invaders as they might 
have done. It is a strange feeling I have had in passing 
over these prairies to have the driver or my traveling com- 
panion saying, " On this spot Roberts was murdered, and 
here is the pile of stones at his grave ; at this spot another 
was butchered ; here that woman at the home of Mr. 
Hyatt was seized, gagged, kicked, and left for dead ; 
here this house was burned, there that ; here the presses 
of the Herald, the Free State, and the Times were 
destroyed." We stopped two nights with the family of 
Ottawa Jones, an Indian who, having received a college 
education, married a white woman who had come as a mis- 
sionary to his tribe twenty years ago. He has a farm of 
two hundred and fifty acres under the best of cultivation. 
He had a house two stories high, twenty by fifty feet, well 
finished and furnished. He sympathized with the free 
state cause but took no part. A company of eighty cow- 
ardly brutes came to his house one night and aroused him 



BEFORE THE WAR. 



17 



by breaking in the windows. Mr. Jones fled through a 
shower of bullets out of the back door into the cornfield, 
and his wife was robbed of eight hundred dollars in gold 
which she was bringing out of the house, which was 
burned to the ground. A sick man in the house was 
dragged down-stairs, had his throat cut, and his body 
thrown into the stream near by, though he still survives 
the horrid gashes. The large stone chimney still stands 
upon the ruins, a monument of barbarism more savage, 
as the family said, than they had ever known in savage 
life. And the leader of this gang was Captain H., of Mis- 
souri, who boasted of the hospitality he had shared in that 
house ! It was refreshing to enjoy the family devotions of 
Mr. Jones. He had just returned from Washington, where 
a treaty was made by which his tribe, numbering two hun- 
dred and thirty, is received into citizenship, each one tak- 
ing two hundred and forty acres of land. They will vote 
the free state ticket, 

I was present at the opening and adjourning of the 
Constitutional Convention at Lecompton. The printer 
was chosen because he had distinguished himself in the 
Kansas war, and so it was publicly avowed. But this is 
only one section of that gigantic crime to be incorporated 
into that constitution. Taking the ayes and nays upon 
adjournment to Leavenworth or Lecompton, Randolph 
arose at the call of his name to explain his vote, and said : 
"Yesterday I was strongly in favor of adjourning to 
Leavenworth, for the whiskey was getting tolerably weak ; 
but since we began to talk about leaving, the whiskey is 
getting quite decent ; now I am in favor of staying here." 
That, you may take for the spirit of the convention. 



1 8 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER II. 

A STATE WITH A HISTORY. 

Saint Joseph, Mo., October i, 1857. 
Kansas will be a state with a history. Probably the 
history of no state in the Union, since the founding of 
Massachusetts upon Plymouth Rock, has had so much of 
stirring incident. Almost every other state has had in its 
early history a chapter upon its warfare with the savages 
of the forest. In Kansas the conflict has been with white 
savages, the Indians having given them no trouble. This 
new state has been the scene of our first civil war, a war 
in which the Federal army, stationed here to protect the 
frontier, has been used to sustain invasion and usurpation, 
to crush out liberty. The history of Kansas will bristle 
with reminiscences of heroism and of martyrdom. It has 
its Bunker Hill and its Lexington ; its Warrens and its 
Putnams. The chapter upon the early legislation of Kan- 
sas will hardly be believed by the future reader of history. 
It will seem to him like a burlesque upon all jurisprudence, 
upon all right and justice The early history of Kansas 
will be marked by the rapid transitions in its government. 
Within four years, two territorial and two state govern- 
ments ; two conventions, convening and forming constitu- 
tions, and a third provided for ; seven governors and 
acting governors succeeding upon the throne of this 
ruffian dynasty, all crucified upon this gubernatorial Gol- 
gotha as fast as they come short of the bidding of the 
slavocracy ! But freedom and peace and prosperity will 
come. The American Home Missionary Society and the 
American Missionary Association have shown a just appre- 
ciation of the importance of Christian ministers in this 



BEFORE THE WAR. 1 9 

Struggle for civil and religious freedom, by early sending, 
each of them, four or five home missionaries. The influ- 
ence of these men is acknowledged as very great in behalf 
of liberty as well as of religion ; and now as society settles 
down, they will have a hold upon the people which will be 
of great service in their specific work, A band of four 
young men is soon to come from Andover under the 
American Home Missionary Society. These are Storrs, 
Cordly, Parker, and Marsh. 



LETTER III. 

THE MISSOURI PLAN IN NORTH CAROLINA AND KENTUCKY. 

Syracuse, N. Y., October 12, i860. 
Here at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Ameri- 
can Missionary Society in Rev. M. E. Strieby's Plymouth 
Church, we have a lot of refugees, our missionaries, driven 
out of North Carolina and Kentucky by mob violence on 
account of their liberty-loving sentiments. Here is Rev. 
Daniel Worth, of Quaker origin, a native of the old North 
State, where he had served as a justice of the peace. 
The New York Herald says he " is a large, portly man, 
with a large head and intellectual and expressive counte- 
nance and a large, commanding eye. He looks enough 
like Burton, the comedian, to be his twin-brother. He is 
fluent in speech, and the general style and manner of his 
speaking are calculated to win attention." He was 
arrested in Guilford County and thrown into the Greens- 
boro' jail. He was released upon three thousand dollars 
of bail. This sum the friends at the north have raised, 
and now he is a free man. The punishment, if he had 
been convicted, \*-ould have been pillory, whipping, and 



20 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

imprisonment. The sole charge on which he was impris- 
oned, after the preHminary examination, was the circula- 
ting of " Helper's Impending Crisis," a book written by a 
southern man, and dwelling, not upon the moral aspects 
of slavery, but solely upon its economic bearings. Now 
we have here a pamphlet entitled "An Address to the 
People of North Carolina on the Evils of Slavery," printed 
in that state and in that very county in the year 1830, by 
the " Manumission Society of North Carolina," which a 
newspaper in that state declares to be ten times worse 
than Helper's book. It maintains these propositions : 
" First, Our slave system is radically evil. Second, It 
is founded in injustice and cruelty. Third, It is a fruitful 
source of pride, idleness, and tyranny. Fourth, It in- 
creases depravity in the human heart, and nourishes a 
train of dark and brutal passions and lusts, disgraceful to 
the human nature and destructive of the general welfare. 
Fifth, It is no less contrary to the Christian religion than 
to the dictates of justice and humanity." Mr. Worth and 
his associates had eight Wesleyan churches under their 
charge. Rev, Alfred Vestal was driven back north by 
violence. Another was seized by the throat in the pulpit 
and shamefully treated. They were all under commission 
of this body. 

The whole Kentucky force has been driven out. Rev- 
erends George Candee and William Kendrick were seized 
in Laurel County by a committee ; their hair and beards 
were sheared off, and then their heads and faces were tarred. 
Rev, J. C. Richardson was teaching a school in Whitley 
County ; being suspected of anti-slavery sentiments, upon 
search a copy of Wesley's tract on slavery was found in 
his possession. He was seized and bound with ropes at 
the house of Mr, Rockhold, where was the post-office, to 



BEFORE THE WAR. 21 

which he had gone for his mail. There he was kept under 
an armed guard of three men. He was released by two 
Elliott brothers and their father, powerful men, who took 
away their man, covering his escape by their rifles. The 
whole of the Berea community were driven out upon the 
demand of a committee of sixty of the first citizens of 
Madison County, who in martial array rode around from 
house to house. Among those thus compelled to leave 
were the families of Reverends John G. Fee, J. A. Rogers, 
and James S. Davis. This, after the burning of their mill, 
and mobs and whippings not a few. It was the shiver of 
the John Brown raid that had aroused the people to these 
atrocities. I spent the evening with John Brown not long 
ago at the house of John Jones, a colored man in Chicago, 
when he was on his way with a batch of fugitives from 
Missouri to Canada. He said he was showing the people 
at the south what could be done. He did the same at 
Harper's Ferry. On the evening of his execution we had 
a prayer-meeting in Plymouth Church, to pray for the 
emancipation of the slave. 

This has been a grand meeting of the Association. 
The refugees have added greatly to the enthusiasm. Dr. 
John Morgan preached the sermon. In the home field 
there were last year 112 missionary pastors, who served 
145 churches. Of these churches there were in the states 
east of the Ohio, 15 ; in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, 35 ; 
in Illinois, 23 ; in Wisconsin and Minnesota, 14 ; in Iowa, 
10; in Kansas, 4; in Missouri, i ; in Kentucky, 8; and in 
North Carolina, 2. Among these may be mentioned : in 
Michigan, those of Charlotte, Augusta, Allegan, Eaton 
Rapids, Grand Haven ; in Illinois, DeKalb, Dundee, Pax- 
ton, Sandwich, New England of Aurora, Morrison, and 
Waukegan ; in Wisconsin, Broadhead, Reedsburg, Bur- 



22 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

lington, and Sparta ; in Iowa, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, 
Mason City ; in Minnesota, the Plymouth Church of Min- 
neapolis, It was to labor among these churches that I 
resigned my pastorate last July. 



PERIOD II. 

DURING THE WAR, 1861-63. 

The South Pushing at the North. — Emancipation Memorial. — Soldiers 
from Western Colleges. — Trip to the Army. — United States Sani- 
tary Disbursements. — Surgery in the Army. — Emancipation Meet- 
ing. — Boston Tract Society in the Army. — A New York May 
Anniversary. — The Morgan Raid. — First Sanitary Fair. 



LETTER IV. 

THE KING OF THE SOUTH PUSHING AT THE KING OF 
THE NORTH. 

Norwich, Conn., October 25, 1861. 
In 1856 was printed that sermon with a prophecy on 
the king of the south coming forth to fight against the 
king of the north. So soon has it come to pass. At 
Sumter did that king, moved with choler, push at our king 
to rouse him to come Hke a whirlwind, with chariots and 
with horsemen and with many ships, to enter into the 
countries and pass over. The American Missionary Asso- 
ciation, holding its anniversary in this ancient city, by its 
identification with the cause of freedom now finds itself 
brought to the forefront of the battle. By General 
Butler's stroke of genius the colored people coming 
through our lines at Fortress Monroe are not to be sent 
back to their masters, but are to be treated as " contra- 
band of war." There are now eighteen hundred of them, 
in great destitution. Rev. L. C. Lockwood has been sent 
forward as a missionary, General Wool heartily approving. 



24 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

He is to preach at the fortress, the seminary, and at the 
Tyler House. A week-day school was opened on the seven- 
teenth of September, under Mrs. Mary E. Peake, a colored 
person of English education ; and Sunday-schools were 
opened at the three places named, the last being the resi- 
dence of ex-President Tyler. Not only Bibles, Testaments, 
» and school-books, but clothing has been sent forward to 
meet the necessities of the "contrabands." This body, 
moved by the grandeur of the opportunity, declared its 
purpose " to follow the armies of the United States with 
faithful missionaries and teachers." How grand the open- 
ing when God, by the issues of war, shall set before us a 
"wide and effectual door" in all the south for teaching 
and propagating the gospel, and when four millions of 
ex-slaves shall be thrown upon our hands for nourishment 
into Christian citizenship ! 

The Association, in this changed order of things, while 
expressing thanks to God for the work accomplished in 
the north-west by its missionaries and by its organic testi- 
mony against slavery, has determined now the more to 
concentrate its effort along the fifteen hundred miles of 
border-ground and over in the slave states as rapidly as 
possible. This, as is contemplated, will leave the mission- 
aries and the district secretary of the north-west to fall 
over into their natural relation to the American Home 
Missionary Society. 

LETTER V. 

THE EMANCIPATION MEMORIAL. 

Chicago, September 20, 1862. 

The idea of such a memorial was born in the brain of 

Dr. William W. Patton. I had the honor of circulating 



DURING THE WAR. 25 

the call for the meeting that adopted the memorial. We 
agreed that the call should be limited to those who were 
ready to ask for emancipation, thus shutting off discussion 
on that question. In passing about the streets for signa- 
tures, I was deeply impressed with the fact that so many 
of our business men of first position were Christian men. 
The call was also signed by the Congregational, Baptist, 
and Methodist ministers. After the meeting had been 
held and the memorial adopted, the following circular was 
issued, calling upon the people in other places to hold 
similar meetings : — 

Chicago, Septembers, 1862. 

Dear Sir, — At the call of more than one hundred of the prominent 
citizens of this city, a meeting of all denominations was held in Bryan 
Hall, Thursday evening, September 4, Hon. L. B. Otis in the chair, to 
take measures to memorialize the President to issue a proclamation 
of national emancipation. At this meeting the Hon. Grant Goodrich, 
Hon. John iM. Wilson. Rev. T. M. Eddy, d.d., Rev.W.W. Everts, D.D., 
Hon. Mark Skinner, Rev. Nathaniel Colver, d.d.. Rev. W. W. Patton, 
D.D., and Hon. S. B. Gookins were appointed a committee to report 
a memorial and resolutions to be adopted at a subsequent gathering. 

On Sabbath evening, September 7, in the same immense hall, which 
was crowded to overflowing, and from which hundreds went away unable 
to gain entrance, the following memorial and resolutions, recommended 
by the committee, were adopted unanimously by a solemn rising vote. 

A delegation, consisting of Rev. W. W. Patton, d.d., Hon. Mark 
Skinner, Rev. John Dempster, d.d., and Charles Walker, Esq., was 
appointed to carry the memorial in person to Washington and present 
it to the President. 

Read it ! Read it carefully ! Call your Christian fellow-citizens 
together, without distinction of sect, and adopt it, or something like it, 
and send it to the President. The united voice of the Christians of 
this whole land should go up to the executive mansion, calling for justice 
to the oppressed. We must as a nation learn righteousness, or our 
poor, bleeding, imperiled country is undone. Religious men every- 
where at such a time as this should act and speak fearlessly and 
promptly. They should also pray unceasingly that God would incline 



26 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

our President to do that great act of justice and mercy which this 
memorial implores. 

Dear sir, as you love your God, we beg that you will not delay to act 
in this matter. 

Joseph E. Roy, 

s. b. gookins, 

Nathaniel Colver, 

Lucius H. Bugbee, Committee of Correspondence. 

To His Excellency, Abraham Lincoln , President of the United States, 
— Your memorialists of all Christian denominations in the city of 
Chicago, assembled in solemn meeting to consider the moral aspects 
of the war now waging, would utter their deepest convictions as to the 
present relation of our country and its rulers to the government and 
providence of Almighty God ; and would respectfully ask a hearing for 
the principles and facts deemed fundamental to a right judgment of this 
appalling crisis. And to this we are encouraged by the frequency with 
which, on various public occasions, you have officially recognized the 
dependence of the country and its chief magistrate upon the divine 
favor. 

We claim, then, that the war is a divine retribution upon our land for 
its manifold sins, and especially for the crime of oppression, against 
which the denunciations of God's Word are so numerous and pointed. 

The American nation, in this its judgment hour, must acknowledge 
that the cry of the slave, unheeded by man, has been heard by God 
and answered in this terrible visitation. The time has at length come 
of which Jefferson solemnly warned his countrymen, as he declared 
that the slaves of America were enduring "a bondage, one hour of 
which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which occasioned 
the war of the Revolution," and added : " When the measure of their 
tears shall be full, when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in 
darkness, doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress by 
diffusing a light and liberality among their oppressors ; or at length by 
his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to things of this world, 
and that they are not left to the guidance of blind fatality." 

The slave oligarchy has organized the most unnatural, perfidious, and 
formidable rebellion known to history. It has professedly established 
an independent government on the avowed basis of slavery, admitting 
that the federal union was constituted to conserve and promote liberty. 
All but four of the slave states have seceded from the Union, and those 



DURING THE WAR. 



27 



four (with the exception of Delaware, in which slavery but nominally 
exists) have been kept in subjection only by overwhelming military 
force. Can we doubt that this is a divine retribution for national sin, 
in which our crime has justly shaped our punishment? 

Proceeding upon this belief, which recent events have made it almost 
atheism to deny, your memorialists avow their solemn conviction, deep- 
ening every hour, that there can be no deliverance from divine judg- 
ments till slavery ceases in the land. We can not expect God to save 
a nation that clings to its sin. This is too fearful an hour to insult 
God or to deceive ourselves. National existence is in peril ; our sons 
and brothers are falling by tens of thousands on the battle-field ; the 
war becomes daily more determined and destructive. While we speak, 
the enemy thunders at the gates of the capital. Our acknowledged 
superiority of resources has thus far availed little or nothing in the con- 
flict. As Christian patriots we dare not conceal the truth, that these 
judgments mean what the divine judgments meant in Egypt. They 
are God's stern command, " Let my people go." 

This work of national repentance has been inaugurated by the aboli- 
tion of slavery in the District of Columbia, and its prohibition in the 
territories, as also by encouragement to emancipation in the border 
slave states, offered by Congress at the suggestion of the President. 

But these measures do not meet the crisis, as regards either the 
danger of the country or the national guilt. We urge you, therefore, 
as the head of this Christian nation, from considerations of moral prin- 
ciple and as the only means of preserving the Union, to proclaim 
without delay national emancipation. 

However void of authority in this respect you might have been in 
time of peace, you are well aware, as a statesman, that the exigencies 
of war are the only limits of its powers, especially in a war to preserve 
the very life of the nation. And these exigencies are not to be restricted 
to what may avail at the last gasp prior to national death, but are to be 
interpreted to include all measures that may most readily and thoroughly 
subdue the enemy. The rebels have brought slavery under your con- 
trol by their desperate attack upon the life of the republic. They have 
created a moral, political, and military necessity which warrants the 
deed, and now God and a waiting world demand that the opportunity 
be used. And surely the fact that they have placed in our power a 
system which, while it exposes them, is itself the grossest wickedness 
adds infinitely to the obligation to strike the blow. 



28 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

In this view of a change of power involving an equal change in duty, 
we will not conceal the fact that gloom has filled our hearts at every 
indication that the war was regarded as simply an issue between the 
federal authorities and the rebel states, and that therefore slavery was 
to be touched only to the extent that the pressure of rebel success 
might absolutely necessitate. Have we not reason to expect rebel suc- 
cess on that policy? Are we to omit from our calculations the neces- 
sary conditions of divine favor? Has the fact no moral force that the 
war has suddenly placed within the power of the President the system 
that has provoked God's wrath? Is there not danger that while we are 
waiting till the last terrible exigency shall force us to liberate the slave 
God may decide the contest against us, and the measure that we would 
not adopt on principle prove too late for our salvation? We claim that 
justice, here as every-where, is the highest expediency. 

At the time of the national peril of the Jews under Ahasuerus, Mor- 
decai spake in their name to Queen Esther, who hesitated to take the 
step necessary to their preservation, in these solemn words: " Think 
not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than 
all the Jews. For if thou altogether boldest thy peace at this time, then 
shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another 
place ; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed : and who 
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as 
this?" And your memorialists believe that in divine providence you 
have been called to the Presidency to speak the word of justice and 
authority which shall free the bondman and save the nation. Our 
prayer to God is that by such an act the name of Abraham Lincoln mav 
go down to posterity, with that of George Washington, as the second 
saviour of our country. 

RESOLUTIONS. 

Resolved, That universal emancipation seems pointed out by provi- 
dence as the most effectual, if not the only, means of saving our 
country. 

That in the appalling loss of blood and treasure and repeated reverses 
to our arms, pressing the nation to the verge of destruction, should be 
heard the voice that sounded above the wail of desolated Egypt : " Let 
my people go." 

That universal emancipation as a mere act of political justice would 
be without a parallel in the annals of the world. 

That it would be the abandonment of a wrong long perpetuated 



DURING THE WAR. 29 

against the oppressed race, to the contravention of impartial liberty, 
the reproach of free institutions, and the dishonor of our country. 

That it would be a consummation of the expectations of the founders 
of the republic, who, deploring while tolerating slavery, anticipated 
its early disappearance from the continent. 

That it would accord with the world's convictions of justice and the 
higher teachings of Christianity. 

That we should not expect national deliverance till we rise at least to 
the moral judgment of Jefferson, who, in view of slavery, exclaimed : 
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his 
justice can not sleep forever ; that, considering numbers, nature, and 
natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange 
of situation, is among possible events ; that it may become probable by 
supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can 
take side with us in such a contest." 

That all assumed right to slavery under the Constitution is forfeited 
by open and persistent rebellion ; and therefore emancipation, to pre- 
serve the republic, would only vindicate and honor the Constitution. 

That, as slavery is a principal reliance of the rebellion, conserving 
its property, tilling its plantations, feeding and clothing its armies, 
freeing the slaves would take away its support, recall its armies from the 
field, demoralize its conspiracy, and organize in its midst a power for 
its overthrow. 

That putting down this rebellion is as obvious a Christian duty as 
prayer, preaching, charity to the poor, or missions to the heathen. 

That the postponement of emancipation jeopards countless treasure, 
the best blood and the existence of the nation. 

That no evils apprehended from emancipation are comparable to 
those that would arise from the overthrow of the republic, and they 
would fall upon those madly provoking the catastrophe. 

That as the perpetuation and extension of slavery were a primary aim 
of this rebellion, its overthrow would seem a fitting and signal retribu- 
tion upon its authors, like hanging Haman upon the gallows he erected 
for Mordecai. 

That it were better for this generation to perish than that the Ameri- 
can Union should be dissolved ; and it is a delusion that those disloyal 
and belligerent under the Constitution and traditions of their fathers 
would become peaceable citizens, observant of treaties and oaths in 

rival states. 

E. W. Blatchford, Secretary. 

L. B. Otis, Chairman. 



30 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



Doctors Dempster and Patton were the bearers of the 
memorial. President Lincoln heard them graciously, 
bringing out such arguments on the other side as occurred 
to him. These were reported in the papers, and The 
Chicago Times suggested that the President had put a bee 
in the doctors' ears. But Dr. Patton came home expecting 
a favorable issue, and so set his people to praying in a 
daily morning prayer-meeting for that result ; and while 
they were praying the announcement came of the prelimi- 
nary proclamation.^ 

LETTER VL 

REVIVALS IN WAR TIME. CONSUL ZEBINA EASTMAN. 

Chicago, November ii, 1862. 
The war times do not seem altogether unfavorable to 
revivals. The excitement of the public mind breaks up 
that lethargy which is antagonistic to Christian influences. 
The people are now communing with great moral princi- 
ples, and this arouses sensibility. It is comparatively easy 
now to illustrate the moral government of God. The 
churches of God are not left without the manifestations of 
the Spirit. This is true at Cairo, III, where Rev. John T. 
Aver)% the evangelist, is assisting the pastor, and many 
citizens and soldiers have found hope in Christ. The 
pastor is the only Protestant minister in the county except 
the United States chaplains. At this point and along up 
the Illinois Central Railroad there are located three thou- 
sand troops. 

1 Some months after this Joseph Medill, of The Chicago Tribune, who had recently been 
in Washington, told me that Secretary Stanton had said to him: "Tell those Chicago 
doctors that their interview did the business; that before their coming the President had been 
undecided." 



DURING THE WAR. 3 1 

Mr. Zebina Eastman, who for twelve years was editor 
and proprietor of the first anti-slavery paper in the state, 
The Western Citizen, which was incorporated into The 
Chicago Tribune, and who is now our consul at Bristol, 
England, is doing a good work over there in giving the 
English people correct ideas of our national affairs. 
" Our Civil War and Slavery " is the title of an address 
delivered by him in Arley Chapel, Bristol, and now 
passed to the third edition in London. His former 
acquaintance with the abolitionists of England must give 
weight to his influence there. President Lincoln has 
honored our country by honoring this old emancipationist. 
The Wisconsin General Convention of Congregational and 
Presbyterian ministers and churches, recently in session 
at Beloit, devoted an evening to the state of the country. 
Addresses were made by President Chapin, Rev. Joseph 
E. Roy, and Senator Doolittle, in the strain of sustaining 
the President in his preliminary proclamation, which was 
endorsed by a solemn rising vote of the assembly. 



LETTER VIL 

SOLDIERS FROM OUR WESTERN COLLEGES. ILLINOIS 

CHAPLAINS. 

Chicago, December 15, 1862. 
The war has brought into strong light the influence of 
our western colleges in nourishing patriotism. When the 
firing upon Fort Sumter echoed the call to arms, no 
class sprang into line with greater alacrity than did the 
sons of our colleges. At Oberlin, two companies, formed 
mostly of students, responded at onqe to the call of the 
President, and were incorporated in the second regiment 



32 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



of Ohio. The present senior class, that entered with 
eighty, is now reduced to eight. General Cox, a son-in-law 
of President Finney, is an alumnus of Oberlin, and many 
of the alumni are officers in the army. In all, Oberlin 
has sent nine theologues, ninety - two collegians, one 
hundred and fifty "preps," and five hundred former 
students, a total of seven hundred and fifty-one, a regi- 
ment of young ironsides. Besides these a company of 
" squirrel hunters " went for two or three weeks to the 
defence of Cincinnati. The Baptist theological school 
at Kalamazoo, Mich., has been nearly emptied of students. 
Illinois College has enlisted thirty-two graduates and fifty- 
one under-graduates, while former students have doubled 
this number, making one hundred and sixty-six in all. 
Knox College has furnished seventy graduates and under- 
graduates ; Wheaton sends sixty-seven ; Beloit, sixty-two 
in all. The Beloit College Register in its army list shows 
that of these student soldiers, sixteen are officers. Shurt- 
leff counts her forty-five soldiers in the army. Generals 
Pope, Cook, Palmer, and many other officers of less note 
were once students there. Marietta has her sixty-one gradu- 
ates and under-graduates in the service, besides quite a 
number who did not complete the course. Prof. E. B. 
Andrews, of this college, has gone up from the position 
of major to that of colonel. Wabash has sent off seventy- 
six of her sons. She is represented by General S. S. Fry, 
General Charles Cruft, General Lew Wallace, General J. J. 
Reynolds, and a plenty of minor officers. Adrian College 
counts out its forty-eight ; Hillsdale, one hundred ; and 
little Olivet, seventy-eight. Of the hundred and forty- 
three scholars in Liber College, Jay County, Ind., who 
were of a proper age, eighty-three have gone into the 
army. Evanston Biblical Institute sends ten, and the 



DURING THE WAR. 



33 



Chicago Seminary, forty-two soldiers, one chaplain, and 
one surgeon. An average of seventy to each of these 
institutions would probably be too small, and yet they 
are all comparatively young and some of them have hardly 
come to the dignity of a list of alumni. The other 
colleges of the west would probably range in this respect 
with these. When you add the army lists of eastern 
colleges you will make out several regiments. Then to 
all this must be added the influence of these institutions 
in disseminating the spirit of patriotism. Surely, then, 
this is no time to allow these institutions to languish for 
want of support. 

In this connection I may mention that Illinois has fur- 
nished ten Congregational chaplains. These are : Rever- 
ends Jeremiah Porter, J. H. Dill, S. Day, Joel Grant, 
A. L. Rankin, W. G. Pierce, S. S. Morrill, H. E. Barnes, 
W. C. Scofield, and Daniel Chapman. These pastors have 
each a son in the army : Reverends S. G. Wright, S. H. 
Emery, J. D. Baker, M. Bushnell, D. Andrews, D. Mat- 
tison, E. Morris, O. Miner, E. Jenney, and probably many 
more. It is worthy of mention that Mr. Porter began 
his ministry in 183 1 as a chaplain at Fort Brady on the 
Sault Ste. Marie River, whence in 1833 he was transferred 
to Fort Dearborn (Chicago), where he organized the first 
church of the city. His commission from the Home 
Missionary Society instructed him to look after Fort 
Howard also (Green Bay) and Fort Crawford (Prairie du 
Chien), which he has literally done by subsequent pas- 
torates at those places. He is accompanied by his wife, 
who is equal to most of the chaplains. 



34 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER VIII. 

A TRIP TO THE ARMY. 

Cairo, 111., January 5, 1863. 
I am in charge of a car-load of stores, two hundred and 
twenty-seven packages, from the Chicago branch of the 
United States Sanitary Commission, and en route to min- 
ister to the soldiers wounded in the late battles down the 
Mississippi. I find here one thousand "contrabands," 
well cared for by the government, while a chaplain has 
been detailed to look after their spiritual welfare. Friend 
Headley, from Indiana, with his wife and niece, has opened 
a school, now in its second week, for the children. The 
teachers told me that on the first day of the school 
twenty of the pupils learned the alphabet, and I had the 
pleasure of hearing them read in words of three letters. 
It is a fine bit of retribution that the United States gov- 
ernment furnishes transportation for these people to all 
the north-western states, except Illinois, which had set up 
such a howl over this "negro inundation." The recent 
message of our governor, Richard Yates, aside from its 
eminent ability and statesmanship, is worthy of mention 
in this place for its reverent recognition of God's hand 
in our delays and defeats, in order to bring about emanci- 
pation, and for his generous word as to New England. 
He says : — 

It seems that providence has protracted this war and subjected our 
people to repeated humiliations and reverses for the purpose of making 
the destruction of slavery inevitable. 

He also says : — 

I regret that appeals are being made to the masses by a few public 
presses in the country for separation from New England. Not a 
drop of New England blood courses in my veins ; still, I should deem 



DURING THE WAR. 



35 



myself an object of commiseration and shame if I could forget her 
glorious history ; if I could forget that the blood of her citizens freely 
commingled with that of my own ancestors upon those memorable 
fields which ushered in the millennial dawn of civil and religious liberty. 
I propose not to be the eulogist of New England ; but she is indis- 
solubly bound to us by all the bright memories of the past, by all the 
glories of the present, by all the hopes of the future. I shall always 
glory in the fact that I belong to a republic in the galaxy of whose 
stars New England is among the brightest and best. Palsied be the 
hand that would sever the east from the west ! 



LETTER IX. 

on board steamer sir william wallace. 

January 8, 1863. 
This steamer has been chartered by the United States 
Sanitary Commission. We have our Chicago stores on 
board, and in all we now have one thousand and twenty- 
seven packages, about one hundred tons of necessaries 
and delicacies for hospital use. At Columbus we took on 
the balance of the stores. The agency there is to be 
united with that at Memphis. As a sample of what the 
Commission is doing, I was informed by the agent at the 
other place that during the last six months he had given 
out 2,346 bed-ticks, 308 blankets, 22,363 comforts, 8,558 
pairs of drawers, 4,960 pillows, 8,402 pillow-cases, 7,387 
sheets, 13,913 shirts, 3,003 pairs socks, 9,119 towels, 97 
boxes of bandages, 3,946 pounds of butter, 2,260 pounds 
of codfish, 570 pounds of corn-starch, 1,067 dozen eggs, 
16,279 pounds of dried fruit, 6,774 cans of fruit, 2,921 
bushels of vegetables, 491 bottles of wines and cordials, 
and so on through a list of seventy-four articles. This is a 
minor agency with but one man, while that at Pittsburg 
Landing has had five busily engaged. The Commission has 



36 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

followed up every battle with its ministrations. The aggre- 
gate of such articles furnished would be astounding, and 
the good accomplished simply incalculable. As to the pro- 
ducers of this immense treasure, it can only be said that 
the patriotic ladies of the north have vied with their 
brothers in doing for their country, while noble men have 
not spared themselves nor their business in managing the 
central and the branch commissions. Of the Chicago 
branch I can say that Hon. Mark Skinner, its president, 
E. W. Blatchford, its secretary. Rev. Dr. W. W. Patton, 
and the other members have given themselves to this 
work with a zeal only equaled by their patriotism. And 
now with one hundred thousand soldiers in our hospitals, 
while the government is doing all that is needed for those 
in active service, the country ought not to slacken its 
efforts in this great and glorious work of comforting our 
sick and wounded soldiers. Columbus, scarcely recovered 
from its recent big scare, is an immensely strong position 
from a military point of view, but a miserable town. 
Island No. 10, since the recent surprise which spiked so 
many guns, looked desolate and had but a few soldiers. 
The several rebel fortifications along the eastern bank will 
soon be washed away, but there are enough more of the 
mementoes of Commander 'Foote's patriotic deeds. The 
sweep from some of these fortifications up and down the 
river, as well as across the narrow channel, is truly awful. 
The great wonder was the sight of the narrow and crooked 
slough through which General Pope passed his men across 
the bend. 

It is night. It is densely foggy. We hasten on to 
reach our moorings here under the guns of Fort Wright, 
fearing to tie up elsewhere, lest the sweeping guerrillas 
should gobble us up. A strange feeling this, coming from 



DURING THE WAR. 37 

the presence of our artillery and our soldiers. We have 
but one pilot along, his partner having left the boat at 
Cairo, notwithstanding the usual wages of 1^250 per month, 
fearing, as we expected to go below Memphis, that he 
might be picked off by the sharp-shooters, though the 
pilot-house was guarded with boiler iron. 

LETTER X. 

Memphis, Tenn., January 11, 1863. 
The weather is that of mid-October days. The city, 
located upon a high bank, built of brick, with a population 
of thirty thousand, is one of fine appearance. In its rapid 
growth and in the bluster of its business men, it reminds 
one much of Chicago. At present it is said that the only 
truly loyal people here are the soldiers and the negroes. 
As the place of residence, in palatial style, of nabobs, 
whose plantations are below on the river, it has been one 
of the most spiteful of rebel towns. Here is the great 
factory where the cloth for rebel uniforms was made. 
Here I find Rev. Jeremiah Porter, chaplain of the first 
regiment of Illinois artillery, but now detailed for duty 
in the garrison. He and his wife are very angels of 
mercy to the soldiers. Rev. Z. K. Hawley, also of Illinois, 
is acting as chaplain to the Overton Hospital, a grand 
hotel building formerly used by the rebels for the same 
purpose. With nine hundred patients it is under the best 
of management. Here there is a contraband village of 
two thousand people. Here is Miss Rose M. Kinney, 
who, under the American Missionary Association, had 
been with our garrison at Corinth, and connected with 
the hospital and school for the colored refugees at that 
place ; and who, as the post had to be abandoned to the 



38 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

rebels, fled to this city with our soldiers and the refugees, 
pursued and fired upon by the enemy. But no sooner had 
she arrived than she was again at work in hospital and 
school service, a heroine indeed. In two months fifty chil- 
dren had learned to read. On New Year's day they had 
a celebration, at which an exhibition of the school, wor- 
ship, and addresses by chaplains Porter and Hawley and 
a colored minister were the exercises. It was a gala day. 
Their pastor, a quadroon, having returned to Mississippi to 
get his wife and children, had found that they had been 
sent farther south for safety. He had been kidnapped and 
sold for ^1,100 and was still in the care of the buyer, 
bound, when, our forces coming up, the tables were turned, 
the minister set free and the man-stealers made prisoners, 
being now as such in this city, while the man of God is 
dispensing the Word of Life to the people, a freeman. 
The heroism of this war is not all on the side of the men. 
Besides the missionary lady named, here are Miss Bab- 
cock, of Chicago, in care of sanitary goods ; Miss Mary 
Burnell, of Milwaukee, my niece, under the Christian 
Commission ; and " Aunt Lizzie " Aiken, a former parish- 
ioner of mine, serving as a nurse out of the greatness of 
her heart. Here are also Mrs. Hoge, of Chicago, and 
Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukee, women of great experience, on 
a tour of exploration among the hospitals and camps, dis 
pensing wisdom in counsel and in personal attention. We 
find that General Sherman has been repulsed at Vicks 
burg, and with his army on the transports is on his way 
up to capture Arkansas Post, and we are ordered forward 
to that point. General Grant has arrived here and his 
army will be joined to Sherman's. Then, in conjunction 
with Banks and Farragut, another move will be made 
upon Vicksburg. With a gun-boat escort we are off to 
Arkansas Post. 



DURING THE WAR. 



LETTER XI. 



39 



DISBURSEMENTS BY THE SANITARY COMMISSION. 

SURGERY IN THE ARMY. 

Chicago, January 22, 1863. 
As I have just returned from a trip down the Missis- 
sippi to the mouth of the White River, in charge of the 
stores of the Chicago Branch of the United States Sani- 
tary Commission, I desire to say a few words to the friends 
of this enterprise in the north-west in regard to the dis- 
bursement of goods by this patriotic and philanthropic 
agency. An impression has gained some currency that 
these sacred benefactions are not used as exclusively for 
the use of soldiers as they ought to be. As an arm of 
the government, appointed by the President and by him 
entrusted with the important function of the inspection of 
hospitals and camps as to their sanitary condition, and 
yet performing their service independent of the national 
treasury, this Commission deserves profound respect. 
The several branches at Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, 
Chicago, are but the correlative parts of the central organ- 
ization at Washington, of which Rev. Dr. Bellows is 
President, and Fred. Law Olmstead Secretary. The 
appointees, as inspectors, general superintendents, and 
local disbursing agents, are all amenable to the one organic 
body. Thus in the south-west. Dr. H. A. Warriner, a man 
of eminent qualifications, is sanitary inspector of camps 
and hospitals, and general superintendent of sanitary 
agencies in General Grant's army. These are at Cairo, 
Columbus, Memphis, Corinth, and Jackson. He also con- 
trols the movements of the steamboat Sir William Wal- 
lace, chartered for the uses of the Commission in that 



40 PILGRIM'S letters: 

region, a boat which, paying one half of its surplus earn- 
ings to the chartering party, does much towards meeting 
its own expense, while enabling the agents to carry their 
stores to such places and at such times as the exigencies 
of battle or the uncertain movements of war may demand. 
This boat is in charge of Dr. R. G. McLean, who is also 
United States inspector of hospitals, for which double 
responsibility his professional and military experience (in 
Mexico) eminently qualify him. On her last trip down, 
she carried one thousand and twenty-seven packages, or 
one hundred tons of stores, gathered up from the several 
branches. 

The local agencies are usually in buildings confiscated 
by the government and so costing nothing for rent, while 
the agents are held to a strict account for the goods in 
their charge, giving and receiving vouchers for the same. 
They or the general superintendent, if at hand, make 
appropriations to camp or general hospitals as needed. 
Then these goods are delivered into the possession of the 
head nurse of the hospital, who carries the keys of the 
rooms containing sanitary clothing and delicacies. She 
administers upon written requisition of the surgeon for 
each particular patient. Thus, at Memphis, the Overton 
Hospital, in a new hotel, and the Jefferson Hospital, and 
several others there, all confiscated property, are supplied 
by the agency of the Commission, which occupies and fills 
a store in one of the above-mentioned buildings, equal to 
any in Lake Street, Chicago. 

One reason why soldiers return home from the hospitals 
and sometimes say that they never received any thing from 
the Commission, is that the articles furnished through the 
system described above seem to them to come from the 
government. A soldier upon his cot eating canned 



• DURING THE WAR. 



41 



peaches made a remark to that effect, when it was shown 
by the marks that his peaches and his shirt and the bed- 
ding he had were all from the Chicago Commission. 

Another element of strength in this arm of the public 
service is that, while its sphere is not that of fighting, it 
yet hangs upon the rear and even seeks the front for its 
ministrations. Dr. E. Andrews, of our city, who was one 
of the three who were detailed to do all the amputating at 
Vicksburg, told me at Memphis, where he was then in 
charge, that before the battle began he had sanitary stores 
from the Chicago branch on hand, and that they did great 
good. And while from our distance from the scene of 
action we could not, as we had hoped, reach that field of 
carnage, we were glad to learn that the agent at Helena, 
Mr. Pattenburg, had hastened down with stores and was 
able to administer to the six hundred and fifty wounded on 
their way up the river, and, as he said, he was never so 
happy before in his life. At the mouth of the White 
River our boats found one hundred of the slightly 
wounded from Vicksburg on board the Adriatic, used as 
a hospital, and left there, that when recovered they might 
be within easy reach of the army. But in that by-place 
they were in great destitution of any thing like comforts. 
We supplied them with apples, tea, crackers, concentrated 
milk, beef, and delicacies, and necessaries of under-clothing 
and bedding. Never were poor fellows more grateful for 
such favors. At the same place our boat also discharged 
a supply for General McClernand's army up the Arkansas 
River. At Memphis, on my return, I found five companies 
of the one hundred and thirteenth Illinois, and I supplied 
them with the balance of the goods sent them by the 
Board of Trade, and also other articles as they needed. 
Some of them were sick, and all of them, having been 



42 PILGRIAPS LETTERS. ■ 

upon boats for six weeks, were living upon hard bread and 
salt meat. Their apples, tea, crackers, etc., were all the 
sweeter for being a remembrance from friends at home. 

Let us not be weary in well doing. The one hundred 
thousand soldiers lying in the hospitals, sick and wounded, 
who have fought our battles for us, have a claim upon our 
material sympathy. Our obligation is not simply that of 
humanity, but that of debt. 

A valuable addition has been made to the literature of 
the war by Dr. Edmund Andrews, professor of surgery 
in the Chicago Medical College, and late surgeon of the 
first regiment of Illinois artillery, in a " Complete Record 
of the Surgery of the Battles fought near Vicksburg, 
December 27-30, 1862." Seeing that by the confusion 
of battle, the scattering of the wounded, and the imper- 
fect registration, the vast statistics of the war were 
slipping away, and that this costly experience of blood 
and life were giving but little aid to the settlement of 
many difficult questions in surgery, the doctor deter- 
mined to secure a record of the wounded of that battle 
up to the latest period possible. Here is an entire surgi- 
cal history of the wounds up to the twentieth day, at 
which time the question of life or death is usually settled, 
giving the case, name, operation, anaesthetics, and re- 
marks. Of the 750 wounds, 50 were of the head, 10 of 
the neck, 164 of the trunk, 69 of the arm, yj of the 
hand, 14 of the elbow, 43 of the forearm, 41 of the hip, 
107 of the thigh, 25 of the knee, 79 of the leg, 50 of the 
foot. Of the wounds of the head, 10 died ; of the trunk, 
20 ; of the arm, 4 ; of the hip, 3 ; of the leg, 7 ; of the 
foot, I. A predominance of wounds on the right side 
comes from skirmish-firing from behind trees, which is 
usually on the right-hand side. Of the 88 cases of 



DURING THE WAR. 43 

amputation, 13 died. Dr. Andrews was detailed as one 
of three surgeons to perform these operations, and 
it is not likely that any poor soldier lost his limb or his 
life unnecessarily under his skillful hand. The result of 
his observation on ventilation is : " Let the surgeon see 
that he gets fresh air for his men in preference to food, 
warmth, or shelter. Men will live on snow, on wet 
ground, or under open sheds, and do well on bacon 
and hard tack ; but in closed hospitals they will die, 
though they have all the luxuries of the world around 
them." 

LETTER XII. 

EMANCIPATION MEETING. 

Chicago, January 31, 1863. 
It is the year of jubilee! Our colored brethren, on 
New Year's day, celebrated the glorious event. Future 
generations of all climes will hallow this era of emancipa- 
tion. Glory to God, good-will to men ! Addresses were 
made by Hon. John Wentworth, Rev. J. E. Roy, and 
E. C. Lamed, Esq. The last speaker told this story of 
himself : Recently he had been over in England. At his 
lodgings, coming down the first morning to his breakfast, 
he saw a colored man sitting at the table. He shrank 
back at first at the thought of sitting by the side of ^ the 
black man. Then he mentally thus addressed himself : 
" Earned, you are an old abolitionist ; are n't you ashamed 
of yourself } " He went and took his seat by the side of 
the sable man, and found him to be an English barrister ; 
a man well-traveled, a courteous gentleman, whose com- 
pany he ever afterwards sought and enjoyed. "That expe- 
rience," said he, "cured me of all color prejudice." 



44 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

The Chicago Sanitary Commission having requested 
the churches of the north-west to take up a collection on 
the third Sabbath of January for its uses, the result, as 
reported thus far, is an aggregate of $7,760, of which 
$3,444 was from the churches of this city. Such a simul- 
taneous remembrance of our wounded soldiers in our 
places of worship was a material expression of our reli- 
gious sympathy. As a sign of the times, it is worthy of 
mention that on the same day two of the local associa- 
tions of this state were in session upon slave soil : the 
Illinois, at Hannibal, with pastor Sturtevant ; the southern 
Illinois, at St. Louis, with Dr. T. M. Post. Telegrams of 
Christian fellowship and of patriotism were exchanged. 
At St. Louis the camps were visited, and it was cheering 
to see how much the loyal Christian people of that city 
were doing for the temporal and spiritual welfare of the 
soldiers brought among them. 

Those who propose to re-construct our disrupted Union 
by leaving out New England, would do well to consider 
such facts as those presented by Dr. Kitchel in his " New 
England Zone," and by Dr. Joseph Clark in his "New 
England in the West." The Puritan commonwealth of 
ideas, institutions, enterprise, stretches across the conti- 
nent. Emigration and evangelization have sown the seed 
broadcast, disseminating the spirit and the privileges of 
the Pilgrims from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The col- 
lee:es and the theological seminaries of the west are 
distinctively New England in their origin, officers, and 
early endowments. Marietta, as shown by its report of a 
quarter-centennial celebration, has sent out two hundred 
and twenty -two graduates, of whom ninety -two have 
entered the ministry. In the same time, at the beginning, 
Harvard graduated one hundred and forty-seven, and Yale 



DURING THE WAR. 45 

one hundred and forty-five. No man can. estimate the 
influence of these institutions to mold society, to sustain 
the state ; and he would be a madman and a traitor who 
should propose to eliminate Puritanism from the west. 



LETTER XIII. 

CHICAGO BRANCH, BOSTON TRACT SOCIETY. 

Chicago, April 30, 1863. 

The Western Agency of the American Tract Society, 
Boston, under Rev. G. S. F. Savage, whose headquarters 
are in this city, and whose field runs from the Ohio west- 
ward, has already come to a large degree of prosperity. 
Its catholic spirit and its devotion to the moral needs of 
the soldiers are calling out the benefactions of our west- 
ern people. The annual report of the Agency, besides 
books sold, shows the receipt of $5,335- The larger part 
of this amount went to the supply of gospel rations to the 
army of the south-west. During the year the secretary 
has made five trips to " Dixie " for the purpose of visiting 
the soldiers in camp, on the battle-field, and in the hos- 
pital, and of distributing the tracts, books, and papers so 
elegantly prepared by this Society for this use. In this 
way he has given out twelve hundred hymn-books and one 
hundred dollars' worth of Bibles and Testaments. In the 
year, besides doing an overwhelming amount of office 
work, he has visited all the north-western states, traveling 
in all, 15,245 miles. The Tract Society, which opened its 
mouth for the dumb, is now brought into such usefulness 
in this the time of our nation's distress. 

Dr. Patton, a member of the Chicago branch of the 
United States Sanitary Commission, having just returned 



46 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

from a trip to Vicksburg on business for that arm of the 
service, made a report to his church last Sunday evening, 
using as his text the passage of Jesse's sending David to 
the army with the loaves, ten cheeses, and parched corn, to 
see how his brothers fared. He had little hope of the 
speedy capture of that stronghold. Dr. Charles Jewett, 
that old temperance war-horse, in a recently published 
report of his labors in Illinois, says that in traveling over 
the state promiscuously, he has found only one temperance 
man disloyal or reading a disloyal paper. He thinks that 
liquor and disloyalty go together. 



LETTER XIV. 

A MAY ANNIVERSARY. 

New York, May 20, 1863. 
A WESTERN man notices that the New York anniversa- 
ries have not the numbers and the fervor they once had 
on the boards of the old Tabernacle, which must some- 
where yet be resonant with truth and eloquence. The 
anti-slavery society always produces a sensation and 
receives the commendation of the Herald for spice. The 
Boston Tract Society made a grand report of work among 
the colored people. Mr. Beecher had an anniversary of 
his own before the Home Missionary Society, with another 
western man to stand as preface to the volume which he 
unrolled in his own strain of eloquence. Mr. Beecher was 
not ashamed to say, " When I was out west as a mis- 
sionary." It was worth a trip to New York to witness 
the baptism of a slave child, to gain the sight of a vast 
congregation responding by their tears as godfathers and 
godmothers to the little stranger. 



DURING THE WAR. 



47 



They say that it gives breadth to an eastern man to go 
out upon the western prairies. It certainly gives a west- 
ern man elevation to come down among the hills. Every 
visit to them has given me a thrill. As they flitted by us 
on the railway, such individuality had they, that they 
seemed as old acquaintances. The Hudson is a never- 
ending glory. But the climax of my delight was a trip 
over the Erie Railroad by daylight. Seated in the rear of 
the rear car, with a view sidewise and backward, from 
morning till night my eyes were strained and my heart 
subdued. Such majesty, such kaleidoscopic beauty, such 
thrilling surprises ! What a path-finder is the locomotive ! 
On this track it coquets with four different rivers : the 
Passaic, the Delaware, the Susquehannah, the Chenango, 
shooting from one to the other as if by instinct ; now 
creeping along the sides of precipices, now snorting 
through cavernous tunnels, now bidding defiance to alti- 
tude. But who ever discovered, who ever cut out these 
water-courses, and why this piling of land into such un- 
serviceable shapes .'' Eor the same reason that the com- 
mon Author used up in a Lord Bacon enough material to 
make many ordinary men, and that to inspire reverence 
for His works. While thus musing upon the hills so care- 
lessly tumbled together, and wondering what could be 
raised upon them, a friend pointed out a little farm, with 
its plain homestead nestling between the base of a tall 
mountain and the Delaware, as the boyhood home of 
William Bross, one of the editors of our Tribune. Here 
nine boys had been " raised " and educated and then sent 
West — an editor, a doctor, a lawyer, a railroad operator, 
and such like. Then I saw the utility of that soil in pro- 
ducing men to people, subdue, and govern the empires 
springing out of the regions beyond. 



48 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

But those horrid fences ! The grand old stumps of the 
field saturated with pitch, extracted by a mammoth den- 
tistry, and then set upon edge and in line for miles, as 
fences defying all intruders ! So may it be with the forest 
growth of rebellion in this land : chopped down, turned up 
by the roots, and then made to hedge in our government 
and our freedom, a warning against all future treason. 
And so may it be with that other conspiracy, the liquor 
traffic. 

LETTER XV. 

THE MORGAN RAID, 

Chicago, July 31, 1863. 
On a trip through central Indiana, during the late 
Morgan raid, I saw something of the patriotism of the 
Hoosier State. In forty-eight hours after the governor's 
call sixty thousand men had volunteered. At. Terre 
Haute eleven hundred men came in from two counties, 
and five hundred others were under way when orders 
came that they were not needed. At Kokomo, the call 
was received at ten o'clock a.m., and at one o'clock p.m. a 
company of eighty men, made up on the spot, of lawyers, 
doctors, ministers, editors, county officers and clerks, was 
on the cars bound for the seat of war, and four hundred 
more were at once raised from that county of Howard. 
And so it was all over the central and southern parts of 
the state. Although the country had been drained 
before so that the women were taking care of the crops, 
as soon as the hoof of the invader struck the free soil, 
its loyalists seemed to rise up out of the ground. On 
former Fourth of July occasions we have had the rhetoric 
of leaving the plow in the furrow, but here was a literal 



DURING THE WAR. 



49 



leaving of the reaper in the swath, for the harvest had just 
begun. Such demonstrations reveal the fact that the 
country is safe, after all, in the hands of the people. At 
Noblesville a squad of forty Americo-African recruits had 
come to take the cars for rendezvous at Indianapolis, and 
during the hours of waiting were scorching in the sun. 
A citizen, Joseph Gray, Esq., told them to go to the 
court-house green and hold up their heads. A crowd 
assembled, and Gray made a speech, and called upon the 
people to treat these soldiers as they had treated their 
white comrades before, with a dinner. Soon the tables 
were built and a bountiful repast provided, and then the 
sable warriors moved off with light hearts. Now Gray's 
harvest is ripe and no hands can be found. Driving to 
the capitol, he finds the leader of the squad he had 
befriended, and, telling his story, he is furnished with 
a half-dozen men whom the examining officer had rejected 
for inconsiderable disabilities. The jolly fellows put up 
the harvest in good style and received their two dollars 
a day — a generous reciprocity all around, 

LETTER XVI. 

THE FIRST SANITARY FAIR. 

Chicago, October 30, 1863. 
On the second and third of September a convention 
of ladies was held in this city to arrange for a great 
north-western fair and festival for the benefit of the Sani- 
tary Commission. Congressman Owen Lovejoy, Senator 
Chandler, and others made addresses. And now the 
women's fair is reported to be a great success. It has 
surpassed all expectation. We have had the glow of the 
feast of tabernacles protracted through two weeks and 



50 ■ PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

with culminating effect. The opening was an ovation. 
In eight year's residence here I have witnessed many 
civic, military, and patriotic demonstrations, but never any 
thing that thrilled the mass of the people as this did. 
Banks, schools, stores, and shops were closed, and the 
people turned out in a procession three miles long, that 
took fifty-eight minutes to pass a given point, while the 
city every-where was a-fiutter with flags, and resounding 
with vocal music and jubilations. Instead of the captive 
kings who were wont to grace the old Roman triumphs, a 
half-dozen captured rebel flags were borne upon a band 
chariot, while the convalescents from the Soldiers' Home 
and Hospital were carried in the wagons of the express 
companies. Most notable in the procession was the dele- 
gation of farmers from Lake County, who drove one hun- 
dred teams that were loaded with the choicest stores of 
their farms, dairies, poultry-yards, and cellars, to the value 
of three thousand dollars, which was immediately dis- 
patched to the army in camp and hospital. At the dinner 
given to the farmers, in responding to the presentation 
address. Dr. Patton, in behalf of the Sanitary Commission, 
but expressed the experience of many of the people when 
he said that the sight of the farmers' procession entirely 
overcame him. On a later day, sixty-four loaded farm- 
wagons from four townships in Cook County marched 
through our streets, amidst the enthusiasm of our people, 
to the sanitary rooms. But these farmers, by their con- 
tiguity to the city, became only the representatives of 
their brethren of the soil, who for more than a year have 
been making their contributions through other channels 
to this blessed cause, and the honor done was as to their 
class. The conception, preparation for, and the manage- 
ment of this stupendous affair seems a marvel. None 



DURING THE WAR. 



51 



but the ladies could have conciliated and consolidated 
so many interests, and could have done that only in the 
interests of the soldiers. The skill which managed this 
scheme would have engineered a battle or a campaign. 

I do not go into the details of the fair. Suffice it to 
say that Bryan Hall was a wonder for the beauty and 
elegance of its adornments ; that it was filled with arti- 
cles of value, of luxury, and of curiosity, from thousand 
dollar shawls, six hundred dollar pianos, and threshing 
machines, down to fancy-work and trinkets ; that it was 
visited by an average of five thousand and ninety persons 
daily ; that the dinners served by the ladies were patron- 
ized by an average of fifteen hundred persons ; that the 
curiosity shop was a Barnum's Museum ; that Metropoli- 
tan Hall was kept warm every night by concerts, read- 
ings, and lectures, of which two were given by Anna 
Dickinson, at a dollar a seat, to enthusiastic, crowded' 
audiences, and several on the last evenings by governors 
of the north-western states and Hon. Owen Lovejoy ; 
that on the last day a dinner was given to the sick and 
wounded soldiers in the city ; and that the total receipts 
were sixty-five thousand and fifty dollars ! Besides the 
vast amount of comforts that will be dispensed to the 
sick and wounded braves from the magnificent donation, 
it will carry to them a flood of sympathy from their 
friends at home. As a demonstration of the patriotism 
of the people at home, and of the enthusiasm in prosecut- 
ing the war, the fair was worth all it cost. It was a 
fitting accompaniment of the recent political triumphs 
that were worth as much to the government as sanguinary 
victories. 



PERIOD III. 

DURING THE WAR {Cojitinued), 1864-65. 

The Virginia Union Flag. — Death of Owen Lovejoy. — Triennial 
Convention on the State of the Country. — Death of Colonels Mulli- 
gan and John A. Bross. — Tour Among the "Bushwhackers." — 
QuantrelTs Raid. — Lincoln's Second Election. — Plot to Release 
Rebel Prisoners at Chicago. — Illinois Responds to the Call for 
Five Hundred Thousand More. — Blatchford's Sanitary Report. — 
Revolutionary Incidents. — Turner and Pratt go to Missouri. — 
Rebel Prisoners in Camp Douglas. — Richmond Fallen. — Lee's Sur- 
render. — Lincoln Assassinated. — The National Pageant. — Chicago's 
National Fair. — " Little Tad." — Boston National Council. — 
American Missionary Association Accepts the Trust Proffered by the 
Boston Council. 



LETTER XVII. 

UNION FLAG FROM VIRGINIA. DEATH OF OWEN LOVEJOY. 

Chicago, April 5, 1864. 
Dropping in to-day at Bryan Hall, where were dining 
the eighth Illinois cavalry, under Lieutenant-Colonel 
D. R. Clendenin, whom I had prepared for college (how 
we like to stand related in some way to these brave 
fellows !), and who had led that splendid raid tlown 
between the Rappahannock and the James, I found Mr. 
T. B. Bryan, the proprietor of the hall, one of our noblest 
patriots, standing upon one of the tables and holding up 
a beautiful flag. " Here," said he, with suffused eyes, 
"here is the first Union flag presented by Virginia, given 
to this regiment for its good conduct while in Alexandria, 
by the Union ladies of that city. God bless them ! I 
know that place. I was born and brought up there. I 
know some of the ladies." When some one proposed 



DURING THE WAR. 



53 



three cheers for eastern Virginia, Mr. Bryan replied : 
"No; not till she is redeemed." Then it went, three 
cheers for the future of Virginia, and three more for the 
Union ladies of Alexandria. 

The death of Owen Lovejoy occurred on the twenty- 
fifth of March, at Brooklyn, N. Y., when he was a little 
over fifty years of age. Born at Albion, Maine, the son 
of a Congregational minister, graduated at Bowdoin, then 
a student in theology, he came to Illinois in 1836, and in 
1839 ^2.s ordained pastor of the Congregational church 
at Princeton, in which service he remained for seventeen 
years. In 1854, as an indication of the Liberty party 
movement, he was elected to the legislature of the state. 
In 1856 he was elected to Congress, and then was re- 
elected three times, so that he had served a longer period, 
with four exceptions, than any man ever elected to that 
position from Illinois. This fact, as he had always 
championed the unpopular anti-slavery party, shows the 
hold he had upon the people. His death has been a per- 
sonal bereavement to the old anti-slavery men who have 
known the devotion of his life to the cause of the slave. 
Twenty-four years ago, in 1840, when he was moderator of 
the Rock River Association, which had met in Lyndon in 
my father's house, my young blood was fired by his recital 
of the murder of his brother, Elijah P. Lovejoy, at Alton, 
and of his solemn oath of enmity to slavery, taken over 
his lifeless body. I well remember one item in the charge 
he gave to a young man, George B. Gemmel, who was 
ordained at that time : " I charge you not to preach that 
there were two Adams ; one white and one black." He 
was a brave man. Indicted once by a grand jury for 
giving food and raiment to a poor woman who came, 
footsore and starving, to his door, on her weary way from 



54 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

a land of chains to a land of freedom, he faced court, 
jury, witnesses, and, against their statutes and their 
special pleading, beat them with the righteousness of 
his act. At another time he faced an armed and threat- 
ening mob, who had seized a man and bound him, whose 
only crime was a dark skin, cut his fetters and let the 
oppressed go free, while the mob, awe-struck, slunk away 
in silence. This bravery the nation was made to know 
when, on the fifth of April, i860, in Congress, after 
having repeatedly endured the insults and felt the 
oppression exercised upon those who battled for freedom 
and the rights of free speech, he met the confronting 
bullies of the south, who strove to silence him, and 
declared : " You shall hear me. I will speak. I stand 
here to say what I have to say upon the great crime of 
the nation. I will not yield the floor." 

The congressional committee bearing his remains were 
met in this city by a large delegation from Princeton. The 
funeral was held in the church where he had preached for 
seventeen years. It was fitting that the sermon should 
be delivered by Dr. Edward Beecher, who, as President of 
Illinois College, having attended at Alton the organiza- 
tion of the anti-slavery society, and having witnessed the 
safe landing of the press, had returned to Jacksonville 
only the day before the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, 
supposing that all would remain quiet. The sermon, an 
hour and a half long, delineated accurately and gratefully 
the character of the deceased and the crisis in which he 
was called to act. The preacher stated that Mr. Love- 
joy, having sought ordination in the Episcopal church 
at the hands of Bishop Chase, was required by him to 
pledge in writing that he would hot agitate the subject of 
slavery. His answer was: " My right arm shall drop off 



DURING THE WAR. 



55 



before I will sign that pledge. If I should sign it I should 
expect it to drop off." The bishop then agreed that 
he might lecture on slavery if he would not preach against 
it. " Promise not to preach against prevailing sin .^ 
Never ! " And so he turned to the freedom of the Congfre- 
gational way. Dr. Beecher also stated that at the funeral 
services in Brooklyn, a common soldier, a stranger, came 
and knelt by his coffin and kissed him ; also that an old 
colored woman kissed him and held up her child to kiss 
him. President Lincoln said that there was no man he 
could so ill afford to lose. 

The American Home Missionary Society seems to be 
marching into this battle of the great day of God Al- 
mighty, reentering the field from which it had been driven 
by its anti-slavery testimony. Besides Dr. T. M. Post's 
church in St. Louis and Rev. J. M. Sturtevant's in Han- 
nibal, a mission has just been started in Kansas City by 
Superintendent L. Bodwell and Pastor R. Cordley, both 
of Kansas, while two or three freedmen's churches have 
sprung up in that region. At Memphis, Tenn., Rev. T. E. 
Bliss has organized a church. I learn that there is 
one Congregational church in Mississippi, one in Georgia, 
and one in South Carolina. The friends of the American 
Missionary Association at the west are delighted with the 
appointment of Rev. M. E. Strieby, of Syracuse, as one 
of the secretaries of that institution. With a western 
training, an eastern pastoral experience, with eloquence 
and executive capacity, and with a lifelong devotion to the 
cause of the slave, he will make a very effective officer. 



56 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER XVIII. 

THE TRIENNIAL CONVENTION ON THE STATE OF THE 
COUNTRY. 

Chicago, May 30, 1864. 

The deliverance of the triennial convention of the 
Chicago Seminary upon the state of the country met the 
living issues. It was in two parts : one by President Stur- 
tevant, approving the policy of arming negroes, demanding 
for them a parity of treatment and protection with the white 
soldiers, asking that the same measures in the Fort Pillow 
case be resorted to as though the same number of white 
soldiers had been massacred in like circumstances, and 
endorsing the movement in Congress to amend the Consti- 
tution so as to exterminate slavery. The other part of the 
report, by Dr. T. M. Post, set forth the duty of the Con- 
gregational churches of the United States to inquire what 
they owe to this vast and solemn crisis, recommended 
correspondence among frieiids and associations in regard 
to calling another National Convention, and declared the 
duty of self-extension as coordinate with the right of 
existence in any ecclesiastical order, and the duty of 
indoctrinating our seminaries, ministers, and churches in 
the Puritan ideas. 

The Association of Illinois, held at Ouincy, approved 
the idea of a National Council and appointed C. G. Ham- 
mond and Drs. Sturtevant and Bascom a committee to 
confer with other bodies upon the matter. Rev. M. E. 
Strieby, the new secretary, was warmly greeted. He 
presented eloquently the idea of a new element in civili- 
zation, to be introduced by the Africans. The great theme 
of the meeting was the war, the soldiers, the freedmen. 



DURING THE WAR. 



57 



and the relation of all this to the kingdom of God. A 
telegram of congratulation and of assurance of prayer and 
sympathy was sent to President Lincoln. A visit was 
made to a camp of six hundred freedmen, and to the four 
hospitals, where prayer and addresses were offered. Dr. 
Milton Badger, whose heart has not grown old in his 
twenty-nine years of service in the American Home 
Missionary Society, assured us that the society was ready 
to press into the opening fields of the west and south. 
Well may Abraham Lincoln say : " Praise God for the 
churches ! " 

LETTER XIX. 

THE DEATH OF COLONEL MULLIGAN AND OF COLONEL 
JOHN A. BROSS. 

Chicago, August 3, 1864. 

The funeral of Colonel Mulligan in this city yesterday 
was a grand pageant. At Lexington, Mo., when sum- 
moned by General Price, to surrender, he replied : " If 
you want us, come and take us." At the recent encounter 
at Winchester, after he had fallen, pierced by two balls, 
a squad of men picked him up and were about to carry 
him off when the flag being endangered, he ordered them : 
"Lay me down and save the flag." They did so. He 
fell into the hands of the enemy and died among them. 
He was a rising young lawyer of high repute and a zeal- 
ous Catholic. 

Yesterday we learned of the fall of Colonel John A. 
Bross of the twentieth United States colored regiment, 
the first raised in this state. He went down in that terri- 
ble assault after the explosion at Petersburg. He first 
raised a company for the eighty-eighth Illinois, and fought 



58 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

with them at Perryville, Stone River, and Chickamauga, 
and then came home to raise a colored regiment. A brother 
of the Hon. William Bross of The Chicago Tribiuie, and an 
honored member of the bar in this city, a Christian gentle- 
man, he went into the service from pure patriotism, and 
early identified himself with a movement for arming the 
black men. He was a faithful officer, caring for the spir- 
itual as well as the physical wants of his men. The hor- 
rors of Fort Pillow did not deter him from the service 
so precarious in its risks. It is ascertained after the 
assault, foremost among the bodies found and furthest 
inside the rebel works, was found the body of Colonel 
Bross. A surviving captain says that not a man of the 
regiment faltered, and that every one that came out shed 
tears over the fall of their commander and friend. A pri- 
vate letter from one of those black warriors to a friend in 
this city, after detailing the incidents of the night of prep- 
aration and the explosion, says : — 

The rebels poured a heavy volley upon us, wounding Corporal Max- 
well severely, and he was compelled to let the colors fall. Corporal 
Stevens then seized the colors and bore them up to the top of the works. 
He was quickly cut down. Corporal Bailey seized the colors and was 
killed instantly. Thomas Barret, a colored private, seized the colors 
and bore them up to the top of the fort again. He quickly fell dead. 
Captain Brockway then seized the flag and was mortally wounded, and 
was obliged to let the colors fall. Colonel Bross then seized the flag, 
rushed upon the top of the fort, planted it upon the parapet, drew his 
sword, took his hat in his hand and cried: "Rally, my brave boys, 
rally ! " The boys did instantly rally up to him. He quickly fell. 



DURING THE WAR. 59 

LETTER XX. 

A TOUR AMONG THE "BUSHWHACKERS." 

St. Joseph, Mo., September lo, 1864. 

The field superintendent had orders to explore the land 
of Missouri with reference to opening church work in this 
state. On the first night out we had a collision which 
killed six passengers and wounded fifteen. I came out 
unhurt. At Hannibal I found Pastor Sturtevant intrep- 
idly leading on his church. Along the Hannibal and 
St. Jo, at the crossing of the rivers, were yet standing the 
block forts which had guarded the bridges in the earlier 
days of the war. And still, at Hannibal, St. Joseph, and 
many other places on the route the boys in blue are guard- 
ing the peace of the country. General Price is moving 
his rebel army up this way. As I passed along, two 
trains had been stopped and robbed on the North Missouri 
by guerrillas. At Brookfield, the halfway place, General 
C. B. Fisk, in command of the district, had been pouncing 
down with his train of soldiers to set things right and to 
collect of the secesh the value of the property stolen. 
The day before I stopped at New Cambria the "bush- 
whackers " had robbed nine citizens in daylight. The 
house at which I was entertained at Callao has since been 
searched by the banditti, who, finding a returned Union 
soldier at the bedside of his sick child, took him out to 
the edge of the town and shot him. 

Nearly all of the old churches in this region, by the con- 
flict of unionism and secessionism, have fallen into dis- 
organization. Their congregations have been broken up 
and their houses closed. Farther south, within the Con- 
federate lines, the people have kept up their church life. 



6o PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

The great work here will now be to re-organize upon 
the basis of loyalty and spirituality. Many of the people, 
weary of the conflict in the church as well as that in the 
state, seem now disposed to welcome a church that has been 
free from this entanglement, and which, by its liberal 
polity, offers a rational ground for union. Population will 
be flowing into Missouri, which is really a western state. 
New towns will be springing up on these fair prairies. 
I shall recommend that a superintendent be secured, and 
that the work be pushed with vigor. 



LETTER XXI. 

quantrell's raid. 

Lawrence, Kansas, September 21, 1864 
The last time I visited this place, seven years ago, 
I found a regiment of federal soldiers encamped here to 
watch this Yankee, liberty-loving town. Then all over the 
territory the United States troops were used in com- 
plicity with the plot of the border ruffians to throttle the 
freedom of Kansas. Now I find Lawrence and all the 
eastern border of Kansas under the protection of Uncle 
Sam's boys, the difference being caused by a change of 
administration. Besides the fortifications on Mount Oread, 
a battery of one hundred and twenty men, a company of 
infantry, and some cavalry, the militia of this town and neigh- 
boring country is under organization and drill. Recently, 
fifteen hundred of them had a review and a sham-fight, in 
which the Lawrence Sable Company bore off the palm, re- 
ceiving a cavalry charge under an old army officer in splen- 
did style. Five block-houses in different parts of the town 
are garrisoned every night by these men. One of the 



DURING THE WAR. 6l 

forts is under the care of the colored company. And this 
is the preparation for a return of Quantrell. If he should 
come every year with his recruits, fiends from the infernal 
regions, he could not dislodge the genius of liberty from 
this historic spot. 

That raid was on Black Friday, August 21, 1863 ; and 
so it is just a year and a month since the deed was done. 
It burned two hundred buildings, among which were 
seventy-five business houses, and destroyed property to 
the amount of $1,500,000. And now Massachusetts 
Street is nearly re-built, and in better style than before. 
In all, two hundred new houses have been put up on the 
ruins of the old ones. Business is now lively. But how 
can those satanic emissaries atone for the slaughter of one 
hundred and fifty citizens .■* There was method in their 
insanity. Some of them had heard Pastor Cordley preach 
a national sermon the Sabbath before in Kansas City, and 
so they were looking for that " one-eyed abolition preacher 
who had preached in Kansas City." But he escaped, with 
the loss of home, library, sermons and all, and the next 
Sunday he was ready to preach from the text : " The 
morning cometh." And now he stands his night-watch 
on guard. His friends have made up the $1,500 of his 
loss. And so did Superintendent Bodwell escape for 
other years of usefulness. 

A visit to the grave of my brother, Aaron D. Roy, who 
had given his life to Kansas in her early single-handed 
struggle with that power which has since struck at 
the life of the nation, revealed to me a glimpse of the 
horror of the raid, in the long trench where, in rough 
boxes, lay the mangled and charred remains of fifty or 
sixty of the victims. As every man who could^ find a 
horse and a revolver had gone in pursuit of the flying 



62 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

demons, it was not possible to get separate graves dug 
for all. But one hundred of the raiders, it is said, have 
already been made to bite the dust. 



LETTER XXII. 

Lincoln's second election. — plot to release rebel 
prisoners. — illinois responds to the call for 

FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE. — BLATCHFORD's RE- 
PORT. REVOLUTIONARY INCIDENT. 

Chicago, November lo,. 1864. 
Thank God, Lincoln has been reelected ! We had 
here in the summer a convention that voted, "the war 
a failure." It was a painful and significant fact that 
in the scores of speeches made in the convention and 
from the hotel balconies, scarcely a word was uttered of 
sympathy with the government as engaged in a deadly con- 
flict with gigantic treason, or of condemnation of secession, 
or of generous recognition of the soldiers and their ser- 
vice. The harp of a thousand strings was thrummed by 
almost every speaker ujDon the despotism of Abraham Lin- 
coln. The only way to save our property, liberty, and life 
is to overthrow the reigning dynasty. In all the reported 
speeches it would be hard to find an honest word of reproba- 
tion of Jeff Davis. Vallandigham has been the admired 
of all admirers. A friend, sitting by my side, a refugee 
from Mississippi, who with three brothers fled before blood- 
hounds from the conscription, has been into the great con- 
vention. He says that by the spirit of the convention he 
was made to feel as though he were back in Columbus, 
Miss. ^The tone and the talk were just such as he had 
been accustomed to there. But now the answer to all this 
is the people's return of Abraham Lincoln. 



DURING THE WAR. 



63 



The discovery on the day before the election of the plot to 
release the nine thousand prisoners here in Camp Douglas, 
to pollute our ballot-boxes and to burn the city ; the arrest 
of rebel officers and of home traitors and of one hundred 
butternut accomplices imported for the occasion ; and the* 
seizure of cartloads of arms and ammunition secreted 
near the camp, was a merciful and a providential deliver- 
ance. The navy revolvers, already loaded and capped for 
the use of the rebel prisoners, were used in part by the 
four hundred volunteer mounted patrolmen who have 
guarded our city the last two days. I have never seen a 
general election more quiet ; but there was intense feel- 
ing and every body worked. I had myself the honor 
of driving a neighbor's carriage for half a day to bring to 
the polls invalid citizens and the halt and the blind from 
the soldiers' home. Chicago gave a majority of 1,776 — 
a significant number for the Union and for the war until 
the rebellion is dead. 

A new stor}'- of the President may come in here. 
During our state fair at Decatur, a friend was calling 
upon the family of Rev. Mr. Crissey, who is now a 
chaplain in an Illinois regiment. The mother stated that 
many years ago her little boy, when playing out in the 
street, had fallen down and was crying. A tall young 
man came along, driving a yoke of oxen. Picking the 
little fellow up and setting him inside the gate, he re- 
marked : — 

"You will never make a soldier if you cry like that." 

His ambition touched, the little soldier cleared up his 
face. The mother, after relating this, turned to a young 
captain just returned on a furlough, and said : — 

"This is the son, and the tall young man is the 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
States!" 



64 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Illinois responds with men as well as with votes. On 
the new call for five hundred thousand more, we have 
thirty-five thousand ahead of all former calls, and the 
remaining twelve thousand of our quota we can call out 
any day. We have reenlisted sixteen thousand three- 
year veterans. General Oglesby, the Union candidate for 
governor, who, like our President, was of lowly Kentucky 
origin, told us recently in this city how he became an 
anti-slavery man. One old negro. Uncle Tim, who belonged 
to his father's estate, was sold to a man whose son laid 
one hundred lashes upon the back of the noblest black 
man he had ever seen. Though but a boy he determined, 
if he ever could get the money, to buy the old man free. 
Coming to manhood, a cruise in California brought him 
the money. He returned, set the old man free, and swore 
vengeance upon the institution of slavery. 

Mr. E. W. Blatchford, treasurer of the Chicago Sanitary 
Commission, in a published report, shows that in three 
years and two months 68,803 packages have been sent 
to the army, at a cash valuation of $964,059.71. This 
was at an expense of $32,154.01. This is only three and 
one half per cent, of the value of the supplies distributed. 
How grand this tributary uprising ! An incident of Revo- 
lutionary times, just brought to my knowledge, illustra- 
tive of the patriotism and 'suffering of that day, finds its 
counterpart in this present struggle. My great-grandsire, 
a young man in New Jersey, engaged to be married, with 
his wedding-suit ready, was plowing in the field, barefoot, 
and with only the rustic dress of a shirt and pants, when 
the British came to the house and stole all he had. Leav- 
ing his team in the field he went seven miles that night 
in his plowman's rig and enlisted for the war. On the 
next day he recognized the buttons of his wedding- 



DURING THE WAR. 



65 



dress on the hats of the enemy. Captured, he lay six 
months in the "block-house" in New York, where 
many were starved lo death. That must have been the 
place where our modern cavaliers learned this refinement 
of torture. After a service of seven years, for which he 
never got one cent of pay, as he was leaving Washington's 
Guard — so the domestic legend runs — the patriot gen- 
eral cried because his soldiers were no better clad. With 
a blanket, but with no hat or shoes, the soldier marked 
his track home for fourteen miles with the blood of his 
feet upon the frozen ground. " His blanket he had cut into 
a coat and was married in that." My great-grandfather 
on the other side was one of five brothers in the Revolu- 
tionary army, their father being a justice of the peace 
under the king. 

LETTER XXIII. 

TURNER AND PRATT GO TO MISSOURI. REBEL PRISONERS 

IN CAMP DOUGLAS. 

Chicago, February 21, 1865. 
On New Year's day Rev. E. B. Turner left to become 
missionary superintendent of Missouri, taking with him 
Rev. C. H. Pratt as his "son Timothy." The man who 
got Mr. Turner away from his people is called by them 
"Rob Roy." When these men left my house at mid- 
night of New Year's in the teeth of a terrific storm to go 
and breast a fiercer commotion of the moral elements, my 
heart sank within me for the moment as being accessory 
to their running a fool's errand or making a sacrifice of 
themselves. But they are now getting well under way in 
their work. Leaving Hannibal, they were obliged to wear 
their old clothes and to carry material weapons. Timothy 



66 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

is located at Brookfield, the halfway place on the Hannibal 
and St. Jo, where he preached his first sermon in the bar- 
room of the hotel. The Congregational ministers of Kan- 
sas evidently belonged to the Church Militant. When 
Price was pushing across Missouri for the invasion of 
Kansas, Storrs and Robinson, and Rice and Harlow, and 
McVicker and Guild responded to the call for troops. 
Adair was already in the field. Cordley was on duty day 
and night with his company, which was left as a part of 
the garrison for the block-houses in Lawrence, Kansas. 
On the day of that battle, Sunday, there were present in 
one of their congregations one hundred and fifty women 
and only six men, and these all physically unfit for duty 
and legally exempt. 

Of the eleven thousand prisoners here in Camp Douglas, 
three thousand refuse to be exchanged, Major Hosford, 
the commissary, having made it so pleasant for them. 
They occupy the barracks which were built for our own 
soldiers. They have splendid hospitals. He bakes his 
own bread for them. He took pride in showing me 
through his stores of inspected flour and beans. Our 
home is near. We hear the reveille every night, and 
every day we see heavily loaded wagons, hauling fresh 
meat to the prisoners. How does this contrast with 
Andersonville and Libby and the other soldier prisons of 
the south ! The government has put in a grand sewer 
from the camp to the lake shore. Alas, for the filth of 
those southern prison pens ! 



DURING THE WAR. 



67 



LETTER XXIV. 

RICHMOND FALLEN. — LEE SURRENDERS. LINCOLN ASSAS- 
SINATED. THE NATIONAL PAGEANT. 

Chicago, April 4, 1865. 

Richmond has fallen. Yesterday Chicago ran riot with 
joy. It blossomed all over with red, white, and blue. 
Never before such excitement here ; business stopped ; 
streets crowded ; merchants marching ; fire departments 
out ; guns firing all day. Nor was the Author of all this 
joy forgotten. Besides the noonday prayer-meeting, which 
throbbed with the great emotion, at four in the afternoon 
there were meetings for thanksgiving in the three divisions 
of the city : at the First Baptist, Grace Methodist, and 
the First Congregational churches. Then on Monday 
there was a mammoth street parade. 

April 5, 1865. 

General Lee has surrendered. Praise God ! The exuber- 
ance of joy is tempered with reverence in the presence of 
the mighty providence. And what shall now be done with 
the leaders of the rebellion .-* General Grant's magnanim- 
ity with Lee and his men, approved at home, must surely 
be appreciated at the south. The most notable thing in 
this second Monday's celebration was, that in a procession, 
which was an hour in passing a given point, and between 
the Board of Trade and the Commercial College, marched 
three hundred colored citizens, with manly bearing. And 
well might they find their place, for had not their brethren 
marched shoulder to shoulder with the white soldier,-' 
When a base fellow pulled a black man off from his dray 
in the march, he was at once seized and sent to the 
lock-up. 



68 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

April 19, 1865. 

" My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the 
horsemen thereof." In the hearts of the people, Abraham 
Lincoln has made for himself the place of a father. 
Illinois gave Mr. Lincoln to the nation, but she claims no 
preeminence in grief ; yet her wail of sorrow is deep. 
This city has become a Bochim. On Saturday, business 
stood still ; strong men cried upon the streets ; an over- 
crowded prayer-meeting was held at four o'clock in one of 
the largest churches ; and in the evening our two largest 
halls were filled with mourners. On the Sabbath all the 
churches were filled to repletion, all were draped, all 
resounded to the tones of lamentation, . Of course all the 
pulpits sought to give the Word of God for the crisis. In 
the absence of Dr. Patton at City Point on sanitary duty, 
I was called upon to preach in his church. The text was : 
"The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day," and this 
was followed in the evening by a discourse on the Chris- 
tianizing of the south. In our South Congregational 
Church, Pastor W. B. Wright, who had entered Richmond 
with the President, and who had pulled the first bell-rope 
there to call the soldiers to worship in one of the forsaken 
sanctuaries, enriched his funeral service by an account of 
what he had seen, as a delegate of the Christian Commis- 
sion, of God's work of grace in the army. At an inquiry- 
meeting one morning at Point of Rocks there were more 
inquirers than five of them could converse with. He 
feared not the return of the soldiers. To-day all business 
places are closed, and nearly all the churches have been 
open for worship during the time of the funeral services 
at Washington. 

Peter Glass, a German from Wisconsin, is now in this 
city, halted by the national tragedy on his journey to 



DURING THE WAR. 69 

Washington, bearing as a present to the late President 
and his wife a superb center-table and work-stand of 
mosaic art. The stand cost him three months of work 
and the table nine. The two are composed of twenty-two 
thousand pieces of wood with exquisite polish. Without 
the use of paint or varnish there are twenty-one colors. 
Upon the top of the table there are vases of flowers, 
twenty-five kinds in all, fifteen kinds of birds, five kinds 
of pears, besides apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and 
strawberries. There are also portraits of Messrs. Lincoln, 
Johnson, Grant, and Butler. All are wrought in black 
walnut from rails on the farm of the father of the late 
President, and in white holly, colored to suit the varied 
articles represented. The whole was designed as an offer- 
ing of patriotism by an adopted citizen. 

May 2, 1865. 
The solemn national pageant has reached our city. 
Yesterday the remains of the beloved Abraham Lincoln 
were followed to the rotunda of state by a procession, six 
abreast, that occupied four hours in passing a given point, 
while scores of thousands lined the track of the mournful 
cortege. Through the entire night and now on to the 
day the mourners have passed in solemn step to behold 
the face of their departed father, at the rate of seventeen 
thousand per hour. It is much for a strong man to bow 
in grief ; now a nation bows in sorrow and in reverence 
too, for all do see that God alone is great. 



70 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER XXV. 

THE woman's national FAIR AT CHICAGO. "LITTLE 

TAD." 

Chicago, May 30, 1865. 
To-DAY the last of the patriotic fairs, the second of 
the north-west, is in process of inauguration in this city. 
How strange the contrast of this gala day with that on 
which the cortege of our dear Lincoln passed through 
our streets ! It was the first plan to open the fair on the 
twenty-second of February and to close it on the fourth 
of March, both notable days in the national annals. But 
so had the idea grown, even to the aspiration of half a 
million of income, that the time of opening had to be 
postponed. The crowning glory was to be the presence 
of Mr. Lincoln, which he had assured, if it were possible, 
to Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore, who had been on to 
Washington to see him. The day had been set for com- 
mencing the building, which was to cover the whole of 
Dearborn Park. The mayor had issued a proclamation 
requesting a suspension of business to honor the ceremo- 
nies. Military companies were to give brilliancy to the 
procession. A long line of teams was to come to the 
site, loaded with the lumber that had been given for the 
structure. Public school children, a thousand or more 
of them, were to sing in the park. Several companies of 
rebel prisoners, who had taken the oath of allegiance, 
were to enhance the occasion. But that day brought 
news of the assassination. There was no procession ; 
there was no ceremony ; so sharp was the precipitation 
from exultation to horror. But the opening on this the 
thirtieth day of May has been a grand pageant, though 



DURING THE WAR. 



71 



softened by an undertone of sadness. As in the grief, 
as in the joy, as in the funeral procession, so now in 
this of the fair celebration, are our colored citizens again 
participants. 

June 20, 1865. 

The great Sanitary Fair has moved along grandly. 
It has lasted three weeks, and is now to close. It has 
netted nearly $85,000. Of this, $50,000 was given to 
the Christian Commission, and the remainder was equally 
divided between the Sanitary Commission and the Sol- 
diers' Home. This total was not the half a million at 
first planned for, nor had this ending of the war then 
been anticipated. In the place of the President we had 
his youngest and much-loved son, "little Tad." He wan- 
dered from booth to booth, and was finally found by a 
lady sitting apart in bitter weeping. To her inquiries 
he replied : " I can not go anywhere without seeing a 
picture of my father." "You did love your father 
very much ? " said the lady, her own eyes humid with 
sympathy. "Oh, yes!" exclaimed the little child, "no- 
body ever had such a good father ! He was always kind, 
and there was one thing that he never forgot, never!" 
said the child, with loving emphasis. "And what was 
that .^ " inquired his interested auditor. " Every day, no 
matter how busy he was, he never forgot to say a prayer 
with me. If he had time for only four or five words, he 
would lay his hand on my head and say them." 

The glory of the exhibition is Carpenter's national 
painting of the Reading of the Proclamation. Native 
genius must have been touched with patriotism to have 
produced this crowning representation of our country's 
achievement. In the Hall of Trophies a coincidence 
appears, though not perhaps designed. Upon the front 



72 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

of the platform stands the immense catafalque on which 
rested in state the remains of Abraham Lincoln, and just 
below and in front is an ox-yoke manufactured by John 
Brown, with the carbine placed upon it with which he 
and seventeen others had attacked the sovereignty of 
Virginia ; and down by the side of the yoke is a walnut 
rail, split by the late President, as testified to by his old 
friend, Mr. Hanks. John Brown tried to break the yoke 
of four million of bondmen, but he had not the power. 
Abraham Lincoln came to have the power and he used 
it so, as is evinced in symbol by the pile of fetters, 
chains, iron yokes, and whips which lie by the side of 
these larger emblems. The old John Brown song, having 
served the purpose of rallying our soldiers, of comforting 
the enslaved, and of terrifying the rebellious south, now 
comes to our aid at the north in toning up public senti- 
ment to the dignity of justice, as expressed in the line, 

" We'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple-tree; " 

and when it shall have been relieved from this judicial 
application, its "Glory, Hallelujah" may go on into the 
millennium. 

LETTER XXVL 

THE BOSTON NATIONAL COUNCIL. 

Boston, Mass., June 24, 1865. 
The idea of this National Council took its rise in the 
west. Judge Warren Currier proposed it. Dr. Post pre- 
sented it at the triennial convention of the Chicago Theo- 
logical Seminary, held in May, 1864. That body approved 
the plan and referred it to the Congregational General 
Association of Illinois, to meet the same month. This 



DURING THE WAR. 



73 



body endorsed it and appointed a committee to bring the 
matter before other associations and to act with any com- 
mittees that they might appoint for fixing the time and 
place of meeting and for making arrangements for the 
same. The several such committees, meeting at the 
Broadway Tabernacle, New York, in November last, 
issued letters missive by which this body of delegates 
from the Congregational churches of the United States 
was convened. It has representatives from twenty-five 
states and territories. It numbers five hundred and nine- 
teen ; of whom fourteen are honorary members, and eleven 
from foreign countries. It has for moderator Governor 
W. A. Buckingham ; for assistant moderators, Colonel 
C. G. Hammond and Rev. Dr. Joseph P. Thompson ; and for 
chief scribe. Rev. H. M. Dexter, d.d. The idea of the 
convention grew out of the state of the country, out 
of the patriotic inquiry, What will be the duty of this 
denomination toward the south and toward the west, as 
the war shall come to an end .-• What can we do in the 
matter of moral re-construction and of spiritual healing .? 
And so the invitation of the national committee, addressed 
to all the churches of this order in the land, named as 
the first subject to be considered : '* The Work of Home 
Evangelization devolving on our Churches — a work includ- 
ing all the efforts which they are making, or ought to make, 
for the complete Christianization of our country, particu- 
larly by planting churches and other institutions of Chris- 
tian civilization at the west and at the south ; by cooper- 
ating in labors for the instruction and elevation of the 
millions whose yoke of bondage God has broken ; by help- 
ing to build houses of worship in destitute places ; and by 
providing the wisest and most efficient methods for the 
supply and support of an able, learned, and godly min- 
istry." 



74 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

To this end for ten days the Council has addressed itself. 
The grand opening sermon, by Pres. J. M. Sturtevant, of 
Jacksonville, III, from the text, " Ask for the old paths," 
was an inquiry after the seeds of our national life in the 
early history of New England, the causes which have 
hindered the sowing of them more generally in our 
country west and south of the Hudson, and the line of 
practical wisdom and Christian duty in this crisis. Here 
is the nub of the sermon : " Negro slavery shall no longer 
resist the organization of the Church on the basis of equal- 
ity of the Christian brotherhood over half our country." 
The Council, in the line of its patriotic impulse, made 
haste to telegraph President Johnson their Christian 
salutations, assuring him of their profound sympathy in 
his great and trying labors, promising him loyal support 
and prayers, and expressing to him their solemn convic- 
tion that the hundreds of thousands of worshipers in their 
churches would most heartily cooperate with him in 
extending the institutions of civil and religious liberty 
throughout the land. 

On one day was observed a special service of devotion 
for the acknowledgment of the marvelous and merciful 
dealings of Almighty God in connection with the war, 
and for supplicating a gracious dispensation of the Spirit 
of God upon our land, that our restored national unity 
may be consecrated to righteousness and in the peace and 
joy of the Holy Ghost. The Council, declaring the late 
rebellion a crime transcending the enormity of treason 
recorded in the history of other countries, — a crime against 
freedom, civilization, and human nature itself, — held it as 
due from our government, in its final adjudication upon 
this highest of crimes, that, while blending mercy with 
justice, it shall so deal with treason that the sense of its 



DURING THE WAR. 



75 



guiltiness be not impaired, and the majesty of the law and 
the divine sanction of legitimate government be sustained 
in the mind of the nation. It also declared the present to 
be a crisis in the nation's life, demanding the immediate 
appliance of the most efficient means of education and 
evangelization in our power. 

And so with this view accorded the action of the Council, 
which determined to raise $750,000 this year for that object, 
and of this amount to assign $300,000 to the American 
Home Missionary Society, $250,000 to the American Mis- 
sionary Association, and $200,000 to the American Congre- 
gational Union. As to the American Home Missionary 
Society and the American Missionary Association, the 
Council also said : " Nor do we find any difficulty in recogniz- 
ing the respective spheres of these two societies. For while 
no separation is or can be made by a geographical line, 
and still less by any invidious distinction of color, we yet dis- 
cover in the past labors of the American Missionary Asso- 
ciation among the colored people of America, the West 
Indies, and Africa, and in the ready facility with which it 
has adapted itself to the peculiar condition of this people 
at the south, an instrumentality providentially provided 
for their evangelization." And still further: "In Vir- 
ginia, North and South Carolina, and along the banks of 
the Mississippi, the colored people began early in the war 
to come within our lines and were immediately provided 
with teachers and schools by this association. In the 
progress of the war this work has continually grown in 
magnitude and importance until, by the overthrow of the 
rebellion, the whole colored population of the south is to 
be brought within the reach of teachers and missionaries. 
Never was a missionary field more inviting." The Council 
also found that the American Home Missionary Society 



76 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

had already ten new churches in Missouri, one in Memphis, 
and openings in Washington, Bahimore, and other places 
in the south. 

The fellowship was enriched by a delegation from 
Canada, by one from Nova Scotia, by one from France, by 
one from Wales, and by one from England. The members 
of the last-named delegation were Rev. Drs. Robert 
Vaughan, Alexander Raleigh, and James W. Massie. 
Pastor Theo. Monod said : " We of the three hundred 
churches of France were with you to a man, a woman, a 
child. Our families observed the days of prayer and 
humiliation appointed by your Executive. The fall of 
Richmond pervaded all hearts with' joy. We draped our 
sanctuaries at the tidings of the death of Lincoln and 
mourned at the loss of a dear friend." "We," said the 
Welsh, " were with you from the first and all the time. 
Many a Welsh mother in our homes across the sea mourns 
her son slain on your battle-fields in this holy cause." 
The English seemed not only to have come to bring the 
salutations of the mother country, but to rejoice with us 
in the making good, after nearly one hundred years, of our 
declaration of independence and of freedom ; they having 
been stanch friends of our country in its late trial. Dr. 
Vaughan said : "It is your joy to know that your institu- 
tutions, which deceived and false prophets had affirmed 
would snap at the touch of adversity, had borne the strain 
and the snap had not come. Your struggle for liberty has 
taken place in the sight of all nations. Your victories 
have given a new song to humanity and sent a message of 
despair to tyrants. Your triumphs were ours. Your 
armies have gained victories that have placed you in the 
first rank of nations, and what now more fitting than that 
you should show yourselves capable of realizing the victo- 



DURING THE WAR. 



77 



ries of peace." Dr. Massie had made a visit to our coun- 
try during the war as the messenger of many thousands 
of friendly EngHshmen who desired that our troubles 
should end in the abolition of slavery. But after these 
friends had been heard, on motion of Henry Ward 
Beecher, a committee was appointed to prepare a suitable 
reply to these delegates, inasmuch as the attitude of various 
religious bodies in Europe toward the United States, dur- 
ing the past five years, requires a careful discrimination 
and statement. Dr. Leonard Bacon brought in that com- 
mittee's report, which did make discriminations, giving 
undiluted praise to the Welsh Congregationalists and 
French Evangelicals for their sympathy and their prayers. 
Duly acknowledging the sincerity of friendship of not a 
few Englishmen, and especially of the operatives, he yet 
had to give vent to the grieved affection occasioned by the 
turning toward us of the cold shoulder on the part of the 
English people and even of many of our Puritan ancestors. 
The report said : — 

Our brethren who bring to us in this assembly the congratulations 
of the English Congregational Union must not be permitted to return 
under any impression that we have not felt deeply and sorrowfully, 
through these four years of national agony, the actual position of the 
English Congregationalists. Faithfulness to them and to Christ for- 
bids us to forget that honored brethren who went from us to them, for 
the purpose of explaining our position and asking their sympathy and 
their prayers, were refused a hearing. Yet we accept the presence of 
the beloved and honored delegates who have stood in our assembly as 
a proof that they do now understand us, and that the ancient fraternity 
and unity between them and us shall be perpetual. 

Dr. Quint, who had been a chaplain, in moving the 
adoption of the report, took occasion to make a pungent 
arraignment of the British government and sentiment in 
reference to our cause. He said that when he found his 



78 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

men dead, killed by English rifles in the hands of rebels 
who were clad in English garments, he had a right to 
express his indignation. Dr. Raleigh rallied with a story 
of a Scotch exegete, who, coming to a hard passage, was 
wont to say : " Let us look the difficulty straight in the 
face and pass right on." Then Henry Ward Beecher, who, 
in the interest of ou<r country having subdued a Manches- 
ter mob, had a right to speak, in one of his transcendent 
addresses, laid his hands upon both parties ; and then 
Governor Buckingham, in his persuasive way, pronounced 
the bans of peace. 

While the glow of the great occasion is on, it may be 
too early to speak of resultant influences ; but all the great 
measures proposed have been enthusiastically carried 
through. The grand object of the convocation as an 
evangelical expedient has been met. Men, measures, and 
money are to be provided to aid in the Christianizing of 
our country. The system by which these churches are to 
carry the gospel throughout the land has been burnished. 
The faith which is to be propagated has been declared in 
its historic and in its living relations. Great organizations 
of evangelism have been reempowered. Adoring thanks 
to God who, through his Spirit, hath brought out such 
conclusions ! 

LETTER XXVII. 

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION ACCEPTS THE 
TRUST PROFFERED BY THE BOSTON COUNCIL. 

Brooklyn, New York, October 26, 1865. 

This Association in its annual meeting, just held in 

Plymouth Church, this city, gratefully accepted the proffer 

of the Boston Council to make it the national organ for 



DURING THE WAR. 



79 



work at the south, and to raise for this object the current 
year two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This the 
Executive Committee recommended in its annual report 
and the society approved. The same report, in order to 
assure the confidence of the enlarged constituency, set 
forth a statement as to the history, character, aims, and 
plans of the Association. Although the Association had 
taken its rise in order to bear testimony against com- 
plications with slavery, its report also states : " It rejoices 
to find itself and the American Board, the American 
Home Missionary Society, and the kindred organizations 
working in harmonious cooperation in the great endeavor 
to advance the Redeemer's kingdom among men." 

The purpose declared at Norwich in 1861, "to follow 
the armies of the United States with faithful missionaries 
and teachers," has been pursued ; as fast as the army 
has advanced the line of these missionary teachers 
has been set forward until now, with the close of 
the war, it has its gospel garrisons planted across the 
south. At the meeting it reported missions in Wash- 
ington, . Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
lina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. And in these states 
there were employed the last year two hundred and 
eighty-eight teachers and fifty-five ministers. Seventeen 
days after our troops had entered Richmond schools 
were opened there under the auspices of the Association. 
The work of administering physical relief to these 
wretched people has been kept up all along. The treas- 
urer reports the sum of $61,674 as the value of goods 
received and delivered among the freedmen. The receipts, 
which before the war were ranging from $40,000 to 
$50,000 a year, have this past year, besides the sum 



8o PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

named for the value of goods, gone up to $139,660. The 
annual discourse preached by Dr. Kirk, of Boston, was 
upon the supreme topic of the times, " Only One Human 
Race." Our common manhood and the duties growing out 
of it were set forth in Dr. Kirk's profoundly impressive 
manner. Dr. Kirk was made president in the place of the 
lamented Rev. David Thurston, of Maine, who had died in 
the eighty-seventh year of his age. The Association was 
also called to notice the death of Arthur Tappan, one 
of its earliest officers, whose name has been throughout 
the land a synonym for a friend to the slave. Lewis 
Tappan, who had been the treasurer from the first, serving 
for the most part gratuitously, by advancing age was 
constrained to decline a reelection. How well do I 
remember the genuineness of his friendship for the 
colored people as shown by the fact that he furnished me 
every Lord's day for six months, while I was in the Union 
Seminary, the use of his family horse and carriage to 
drive out through mud and storm and sunshine to preach 
for one of their Presbyterian churches in the suburbs of 
this city. The meeting came to its climax on the last 
evening, when addresses were made by Secretary Whipple, 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and Rev. R. S. Storrs, d.d., 
all of whom had been on hand from the beginning, serving 
on committees. 



PERIOD IV. 

AT THE END OF THE WAR. TOUR THROUGH THE 
SOUTH, 1865. 

Mammoth Cave. — Freedmen's Bureau and Bank. — Knoxville. — 
Chattanooga. — Battle-fields. — Mississippi Legislature. — Natchez. 
— New Orleans. — Sea Island Negroes. — Alabama Legislature. — 
Charleston Shelled and Burned. — Black Heroes. — Emancipation 
Celebration in Charleston. — Virginia Legislature. — Generals 
Thomas and Fisk. 



LETTER XXVIII. 

MAMMOTH CAVE. FREEDMEN's BUREAU AND BANK. 

GENERAL FISK. 

Chattanooga, Tenn., October 29, 1865. 
Now for a pilgrimage through Dixie. I was glad when, 
in allusion to a text from which he had heard me preach, 
word came from Dr. Badger : " Will Joseph arise and go 
toward the south ? " Here I am in company with Rev. 
Drs. I. P. Warren and G. S. F. Savage, secretaries of the 
Boston Tract Society, who are to study the south with 
relation to supplying it with literature. Pilgrim is here 
with reference to the planting of churches as proposed by 
the Boston Council. From Louisville to Chattanooga, the 
single line of communication with our army in the south- 
east, barricaded at everv stream and station, the line of 
Bragg' s march across two states and of his retreat before 
the Federals, — how much of anxious thought and prayer 
have throbbed along this same highway ! The first part 



82 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

of the trip was on the day of the great eclipse, which with 
thin clouds for smoked glass gave us a grand exhibition ; 
not so grand, however, as that which revealed to us the 
passing off of the eclipse from our country and its free- 
dom. At Elizabethtown, in Hardin County, we passed 
the place where was the boyhood home of Abraham Lin- 
coln. Stone River, Munfordsville, Bowling Green, Nash- 
ville, Murfreesboro', Tullahoma, are places of classic 
interest, while almost every station on the road has its 
story of skirmish or battle. 

Leaving the road at Cave City, we took stage ten 
miles to Mammoth Cave, through whose wonders in one 
day we traveled eighteen miles. The Star Chamber, with 
its twinkling stars and flaming comet ; Gornu's Dome, 
with its awful chasm ; Echo River, on which we had a 
boat-ride for three quarters of a mile, and whose echoes 
are charming ; the maelstrom ; the bottomless pit ; Cleve- 
land's cabinet, well stored with specimens and ornamented 
on wall and ceiling with the most delicate and rich of 
fresco work in gypsum, are some of the wonders. The 
feeling of reverence rises. In our case it manifested itself 
in a season of prayer at the most distant point of explora- 
tion. In the ceiling of one of those halls, dazzling in its 
ornaments of crystal, is cut "the cross," its parts being 
about eight and twelve feet long, and near it our nation's 
flag is kept unfurled ; and so while Christianity has its 
emblem cut in these rocks under the earth, the symbol of 
our country's sovereignty claims this whole land from sur- 
face to center. Our guide, a black man, said that occa- 
sionally visitors knocked down the stars and stripes, but 
he always fell back and put them up again ; and in like 
manner as traitors have struck down the national emblem, 
black men have helped to put it back again and to maintain 
its authority. 



THE END OE THE IVAR. 83 

At Nashville we were delighted with the working of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, under General C. B. Fisk, assistant 
commissioner. Preeminently this is a bureau of justice; 
coming in between the freedmen and their late masters on 
the one hand and the government on the other, it is a 
most useful department. General Fisk is the protector. 
He is protecting the laborers. He is getting up schools 
for their children. He has a court in which a chaplain is 
judge for the rendering of justice to the black man. He 
has a legislature, as he calls it, an advisory council consist- 
ing of twelve of the most intelligent colored men in the 
city. I dropped in upon this body. With a black man on 
the bench, business was dispatched in a way of example 
to the other legislature upon Capitol Hill. The ten mem- 
bers who were present while I was in pay taxes on 
$250,000. Can't take care of themselves! Some curious 
things occur at General Fisk's headquarters. Here is 
one : A lady comes in wearing silk and feathers. " You 
have my land, sir, and I want to see about it." Her hus- 
band had been killed in the rebel service and his land had 
come under the head of " abandoned." " How far out do 
you live .-' " "About thirty mile." The general requests 
her to write out her case. She says : " I can't write very 
well." Then get some one to do it for you " I have no 
friends in the city, and lawyers will charge too much." A 
colored clerk was sitting near there at a table, a graduate of 
Oberlin. " Well," says the general, "you just sit down and 
dictate it to that gentleman, and he will write it out for you." 
With an expression of mortification and scorn she sat 
down, and when she took off her glove to make her mark, 
her finger glistened with a diamond ring. That is negro 
equality for you ! Another : Up in Macon County a negro 
who had stolen a pig had been tried before a justice. By 



84 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

the old state law the negro had been sentenced to thirty^ 
nine lashes for the theft and five for lying, and his mother 
was sentenced to five lashes for eating of the pig. The 
constable had laid on the lashes lustily. Both officers are 
brought before the court. They confess that they did not 
know that slavery had been abolished. The general tells 
them that he can fine them $ioo and send them to jail. 
They admit that they ought to pay the fine for not know- 
ing any better, but they don't want to go to jail. The 
general lets them off with the fine. Another : A woman 
appears and swears her three children upon her old mas- 
ter, who has turned her off without any provision for their 
support. He is summoned before the chaplain. Her 
affidavit was read to him. The father proposes to settle, 
and is let off with the payment of $540, the penalty 
affixed by the state for bastardy. A son of the rebel 
General Bragg is a porter about General Fisk's head- 
quarters. A son of the rebel Governor Isham G. Harris 
was a member of the black legislature, bearing his father's 
name ; and, as the Irishman said : " If half a nagur is so 
smart, what must a whole one be } " In a church of 
colored people I expressed surprise at seeing white women 
sitting among the black ones, but was told that these fine- 
looking women were of the proscribed race. A beneficent 
institution is the National Freedmen's Bank, chartered by 
Congress, located in New York. Mr. Booth, president of 
the American Tract Society, is its president ; and Mr. 
M. T. Jewett, of New York, the vice-president and actuary, 
is traveling with us and is establishing branch banks. 
In this city he makes cashier Alfred Menefee, a colored 
man, who pays taxes on $40,000. Its investments, by the 
charter, are all to be in government bonds. The profits 
are to go to the depositors. Colored people ought to be 



THE END OF THE WAR. 85 

encouraged to deposit in these banks, for this will stimu- 
late economy, industry, enterprise, self-respect. 

What can I say of Lookout Mountain, Missionary 
Ridge, and Chickamauga ? Nothing worthy of their 
grandeur. By favor we are furnished with passes and a 
guide, and also with the company of chaplain Van Home, 
now in charge of the post. As we ride laboriously up 
the ridge, which runs at an angle of forty degrees for 
half a mile, we realize the terrific character of the 
assault made by our men in the face of the rebel artillery 
and infantry above. Bullets and other mementos of 
the battle are easily found. The chaplain had had the 
pleasure of witnessing the whole movement of six miles' 
breadth : Hooker on the right, " fighting above the 
clouds " of Lookout ; Sherman on the left and pushing 
up and along the ridge, and Thomas in the center, all 
converging upon the enemy. The ridge was named from 
the old mission of the American Board among the Indi- 
ans. On the premises we found only the old mill, the 
old school-house, the old mission burying-ground, where 
we saw the monument of Secretary Worcester and the 
old missionary farmer, Mr. Vale, who came from New 
Jersey in 18 19, and who had been a prisoner by turns in 
both armies. On the field of Chickamauga the chaplain 
made all very plain. The debris of battle was yet abun- 
dant — bayonets, scabbards, canteens, cartridge-boxes, 
hats, shoes, coats, etc. Trees cut down by shell were lying 
on the ground as though a hurricane had passed over. 
One such tree was two feet through at the point of cut- 
ting. We also witnessed the exhuming of bodies for 
removal to the National Cemetery at Chattanooga. A 
detail of two hundred colored soldiers in skirmish line 
five feet apart was sweeping the field, which is six miles 



86 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

long by three broad. They had already recovered one 
hundred and expect to find five hundred. We came 
upon them as they were at work at Bragg' s headquarters. 
Upon a shallow trench which they were emptying of five 
bodies, we saw a young peach-tree growing, four feet 
high, sprouted from a pit that had been dropped in, the 
tree taking into itself the flesh and bones of the fallen 
heroes. And so, out of these thousands of graves are 
growing the trees of freedom, nationality, peace, and 
goodwill. The cemetery is under the charge of chaplain 
Van Home. Crawfish Spring, located on the site of 
a portion of the battle, is one of the sources of the 
Chickamauga. A wonderful subterranean river just there 
bursts out below the perpendicular rock in a stream that 
is a rod and a half wide and a foot and a half deep, with 
a current sufficient to run the mission mill a few miles 
below. 

LETTER XXIX. 

KNOXVILLE. — CHATTANOOGA. — BATTLE-FIELDS. — 
DESOLATION. 

Memphis, November 6, 1865. 
We found Knoxville a small city of three thousand, 
begirt with military works, still under the paralysis of 
war. The returned Union soldiers are taking their turn 
now in driving away their enemies. Glorious was the 
loyalty of these east Tennessee patriots, who had traveled 
over the mountains on foot and by night to enlist in the 
federal army without bounty. From Chattannooga to 
Atlanta is one continuous battle-field, grave-yard, and 
desolation. Almost every foot of the way was fought 
over. As the line of railway was the line of battle, it 



THE END OF THE WAR. 87 

is nearly one series of fortifications. Such destruction 
of property I had not imagined. Lonely chimney-stacks 
mark the sites of once prosperous farms. Villages lie in 
debris. Atlanta, the second city in its power for the 
rebellion, was left, like Richmond and Charleston, in 
ruins. But Atlanta is rising, phoenix-like, out of the 
ashes. Eighty brick stores are coming to completion. 

From Chattanooga to Memphis, three hundred and nine 
miles, is another line of desolation. Over it we had an 
experience of rough travel, making the break of sixteen 
miles by stage. Second-class cars with board seats were 
the best that we could get. In all the south there is not 
a sleeping-car, and we have not yet seen a first-class 
couch. Huntsville on the way is a beautiful village of 
five thousand people, undestroyed. In the midst of the 
city a fountain bursts forth, a river indeed, which supplies 
the population. Recently a colored sister, coming up 
from immersion in its waters, shouted out : " Bless the 
Lord ! Free from sin, free from slavery. Glory to God 
and General Grant ! " Here Rev. Dr. F. A. Ross has 
just preached a sermon on "The Society of Huntsville, 
Past, Present, and Future." The past was paradise for 
purity ; the present, transitional ; and the future, full of 
temptations from fast men and fast women from the 
north. Here I see the slave-pen and the slave-jail. My 
friend said that colored people had told him that they 
had seen blood an inch deep upon its floor from the 
scourgings given for alleged offences to the servants of 
the pure and refined people of Huntsville, by the con- 
stable, at a dollar a head. Here, also, we see in the 
school for negroes a son of Senator Clemens, of Alabama. 
Alas, for the lost purity of Dr. Ross's paradise ! Of 
seven hundred men who went into the war from here 



88 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

only one hundred and fifty can be accounted for alive. 
Three generals are among their dead. All the church 
bells were taken down and cast into the Huntsville 
battery, which was captured before it had fired a gun. 
It was here in the court-house that L. P. Walker, lately 
of the confederate cabinet, declared that he would wipe 
f up with his handkerchief all the blood that would be 
spilled by the craven Yankees. 

In Memphis we find our Union church in a prosperous 
condition. It was communion Sabbath. At the table 
Dr. Warren presented salutations, and exhorted to a life 
in Christ which should be the true leaven of Christianity. 
We had eight clergymen present, the pastor, the three 
travelers. Rev. E. O. Tade, freedmen's missionary, chap- 
lains Hawley and Cherry, and Rev. A. L. Rankin, district 
secretary of the Boston Tract Society. Mr. Tade, with 
his own hands, aided by a brother and a black man, is 
building an American Missionary Association church for 
the freedmen. 



LETTER XXX. 

ON THE RIVER. GENERAL HOWARD. THE MISSISSIPPI 

LEGISLATURE. 

ViCKSBURG, November 13, 1865. 
After our three weeks of rough railroading, the four 
hundred miles of steam-boating to this city was a welcome 
respite. Helena was the only place on the west bank 
where the bluff came to the river-bank ; and this is the 
first on the east bank, so that the town sites and strategic 
points are few and distinct. The everlasting winding 
through the everlasting: flatness was attended with the 



THE END OF THE WAR. 89 

monotony of desolation. Plantations, fenceless and grown 
up to weeds, were the unchanging scene. A pretentious 
"mansion," fronting the river, stands here and there with 
a dozen negro cabins in the rear, and with a former gin- 
house, identified by the chimney of its engine. But from 
the village in the rear the people are gone. I was struck 
with the temerity of the blockade running here, from the 
fact that the bend opposite throws a spit of land clear 
across the front of the city, so that all our boats had to 
pass twice under the guns of the rebels. The caves dug 
into the hillsides, to which many fied to avoid the shells of 
Grant, are still open. Only a half-dozen citizens were 
killed by these missiles. The shell holes in the Presbyte- 
rian church, one directly over the pulpit and the other 
over the center of the church, are still unclosed. We 
meet here a young man, who, as messenger through our 
lines between Pemberton inside and Johnson outside, was 
caught on the day before the surrender of this city. His 
message concerning a last desperate attempt to cut through 
he refused, under penalty of the halter, to reveal. But 
escaping his guard, he joined the army of Virginia and at 
the final surrender he again appeared before General Grant, 
who commended his former fidelity to a trust and gave him 
transportation home. 

We fall in here with General Howard, on a tour of 
Bureau inspection, attended by his brother. Rev. Rowland 
B. Howard, and Rev. J. W. Alvord, the general school 
inspector, who also as secretary of the National Freed- 
men's Savings Bank, has established on the way branches 
at Washington, Richmond, Norfolk, Hampton, Wilming- 
ton, Newberne, Charleston, Beaufort, Savannah, Tallahas- 
see, Mobile, Augusta, New Orleans, and Vicksburg. It is 
understood that Mr. Alvord is the father of this bank idea. 



90 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



The branches on the coast have already received deposits 
to the amount of $175,000, and a total of $250,000. 

We run out to Jackson with the general, where we hear 
his speech to the people, white and colored, not lowered in 
its tone from the high key of justice and philanthropy 
which I heard from him in Chicago before he started out, 
yet expressing such sympathy with the unfortunate on 
both sides, and imparting such instruction to the freedmen 
and such counsel to the whites as to disarm prejudice and 
ta inspire a better feeling. All who heard it were greatly 
pleased. One southerner wished that every white man 
and every black man in the state of Mississippi had 
heard it. 

During our two days' visit to the legislature the subject 
of laws for the freedmen was up in both houses, and the 
purpose, as expressed by one of the magnates, was to make 
their system of labor as safe as it was before. If a laborer 
quits his contract before its expiration, besides the forfeit- 
ure of back pay, he is arrested as a deserter, remanded by 
law, and compelled to pay the arrester five dollars and the 
costs of his arrest out of his wages. A law is proposed, 
making it a crime for a negro to enter the premises of a 
white man without permission — penalty, twenty dollars 
and twenty days' imprisonment. Juries are to be limited 
to white men, and black men are not to be allowed to tes- 
tify against white men. Of course the government must 
put its foot on such legislation. These propositions to 
frame mischief into a law for the black man divulge the 
animus of the legislators. I do declare that I write this 
not in anger but in grief. There is a bright side and I like 
to look at it. Slavery is dead. There is more of quiet in 
the south than we had expected to find. We had feared 
that the confederate army would break up into guerrilla 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



91 



squads and thus prolong the war. They came home and 
now are the best disposed of all the people here. Magna- 
nimity does become the victors. No man who sees the 
desolation of this country can wish for any more of retri- 
bution. We are bound to live together. We are of one 
blood and language. There are many noble qualities in 
the southern character. We are yet to become an assimi- 
lated people, a missionary nation. 



LETTER XXXI. 

NATCHEZ. COLORED SCHOOLS. — POPULATION AND MONU- 
MENTS OF NEW ORLEANS. 

New Orleans, November 18, 1865. 
It is one hundred miles from the mouth of the river up 
to this city ; four hundred thence to Vicksburg ; four hun- 
dred thence to Memphis ; thence four hundred to St. 
Louis ; and thence more than a thousand to the northern 
line of our country. Over this distance the Father of 
Waters now "goes unvexed to the sea." Natchez is a 
beautiful city on a high bluff on the eastern bank, with 
a population of eleven thousand, half of which is colored. 
Having fallen like a ripe pear into the hands of Uncle 
Sam, it has escaped the pounding of war. It has been 
the home of aristocratic planters. We met there three 
Congregational ministers : Rev. S. G. Wright, late superin- 
tendent of the work of the American Missionary Associa- 
tion, but now to be chaplain of a colored regiment at 
Winchester, Alabama, whither he takes two teachers ; 
Rev. P. Litts, his successor as superintendent, and Rev. G. 
Hitchin, chaplain of a colored regiment here. The half- 
dozen teachers under these two brethren had three hun- 



92 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

dred children and a whole regiment of colored soldiers for 
their pupils. 

Yesterday we gave to visiting the colored schools of 
this city, eight in number, brought in by General Banks, 
and named Lincoln, Fred Douglass, Banks, Conway, W. L. 
Garrison, General Howard, General Butler, and Charles 
Sumner. The schools are graded and are conducted on 
the best modern methods. The Fred Douglass school 
is in a building once used as a slave-market and still 
bearing in front the sign, which a coat of white paint 
and one of black could not efface, Virginia Negroes 
FOR Sale. Alas, Virginia ! your occupation is gone. The 
janitor told us that negroes had been there whipped to 
death because they did not fix themselves up well to sell 
at auction. The colored people of the state, many of them 
Creoles, are taxed upon an assessment of ^16,000,000 for. 
school purposes, and last year they paid $37,000 of this 
tax, all of which goes to the white schools. And yet they 
are petitioning the authorities to tax them again for their 
own children ! Governor Wells promises to use his influ- 
ence to have the legislature set apart the $37,000 to their 
own use. A school officer who has been over the state 
tells me that eighty per cent, of the colored pupils are 
tinctured with white blood. In no other place have I seen 
so much of the bleached material, shading out, as it often 
does, beyond recognition. There is also a mixture of 
dialect, as many of the negroes speak French or "Jumbo," 
a mongrel of French and English. French, Spanish, 
Indian, English, and African blood is strangely mixed — 
miscegenation indeed. 

Before the war this city had a population of one hun- 
dred and eighty-five thousand. Now it is said to have 
twenty thousand more. Business is exceedingly brisk. 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



93 



Northern entv^rprise and capital, as elsewhere in the south, 
are rushing in. The streets are paved with stone and are 
kept clean. In its business air, in its flatness, in its turn- 
piked suburban streets, it resembles Chicago. It is well 
supplied with street railways, some of whose cars are 
marked, "For Negroes." Reaching its right arm up 
through the center of the continent, and its left out upon 
the ocean, it is destined to grasp a mighty commerce. Its 
own relation to the Mississippi is an argument against a 
divided nation. Dr. Palmer is in his place again. His 
church is a magnificent structure on Jefferson Square ; his 
congregation, the dite of the city. A college professor in 
Kentucky, who is also an influential elder in the Old 
Southern Church, told me that a delegation was sent from 
Richmond to secure the adhesion of Dr. Palmer to the 
Confederacy, the result of which was his famous sermon, 
which argued that it was the mission of the Church to 
conserve slavery. The elder also gave it as his opinion that, 
if Doctors Palmer and Thornwell had given their influence 
against the incipient treason, it could not have come to life. 
The three or four churches in this vicinity, transferred from 
the Methodist Episcopal South to the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, are just now, by the order of the President, pass- 
ing back into the hands of the owners, so that Doctors 
Newman and Pyrn are thrown out of their places of wor- 
ship. We here learn of Dr. Howard, who, having been a 
popular Baptist preacher in Chicago, came to this city, 
took up the southern side, and died a sutler in the rebel 
army. Rev. E. Andrus, of Michigan, who had been here 
in the hospital service for four years, is now to be the dis- 
trict secretary of the Boston Tract Society in this city. 
A house in Vicksburg had ordered an invoice from this 
society, and one of the proprietors told me that they had 



94 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

sold in two months one hundred and forty-seven dozen of 
Webster's spelling - books, and most of them to the 
negroes ! Here in Jackson Square, gorgeously ornamented 
with shrubbery, floral bloom, and fruitage of orange, 
banana, and Japanese plum, is the equestrian statue of 
" Old Hickory," mounted upon a steed, whose base has 
inscribed upon it, "The Union must and shall be pre- 
served." When the vandals began to chisel off these 
letters, General Butler proclaimed that the man doing it 
should be hanged. Here is also the Henry Clay monu- 
ment, upon which General Butler had inscribed the words of 
the silver-tongued orator : " If I could be instrumental in 
eradicating this deepest stain, slavery, I would not ex- 
change the proud satisfaction I should enjoy for all the 
triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror." 
Here too I see our nation's emblem floating from the flag- 
staff on the Custom House, whence being hauled down, 
the perpetrator paid the forfeiture of his life ! 



LETTER XXXII. 

GENERAL HOWARD AND THE SEA ISLAND NEGROES. 

Savannah, Ga., November 25, 1865. 
I HAVE this report from Rev. J. W. Alvord, who was 
present when General Howard undertook his trying task 
at the Sea Islands. Although by order of General Sher- 
man the lands had been parceled out and the freedmen 
had been promised the refusal of purchase for three years, 
and although they were making them homes, and gather- 
ing around them domestic comforts, rooting themselves 
into the soil, yet it had seemed best to President Johnson 
to pardon the original o\yners of the plantations, which 



THE END OF THE WAR. 95 

must now be given up. It had been made General How- 
ard's duty to effect the dispossession on terms satisfactory 
to both parties. The people upon the island Edisto are 
gathered en masse. Some of the old masters, who had not 
been on the premises for four years, have come down ; 
among them, Judge Whateley, who said that his old slaves 
would be so glad to see him. The object is known ; people 
are sullen under the apprehension of bad faith. The gen- 
eral states his instructions from the President ; tells them 
that if men are pardoned they must have their land ; 
appeals to their confidence as a fellow-Christian ; but all 
are glum. Planters demand that the freedmen shall give 
up their lands and work for wages or quit the island. A 
committee goes out to consult. Meantime, what shall be 
done with the silent assembly whose fierceness flashes 
from their eyes like that of a tiger in a jungle.-' Judge 
Whateley talks. No response. A song is proposed. How 
shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land .'' By-and- 
by an old man with elbows bowed on his knees and his 
face upon his hands, begins. One and another drops in 
until the vast assembly comes upon the mournful melody 
that runs as follows : — 

" While wandering to and fro, 
In this wide world of woe, 
Where streams of sorrow flow, 

We '11 camp a little while in the wilderness. 

Then we Ve going home. 

When tears overflow mine eyes, 
Then to the mercy-seat 
I go my Lord to meet. 

We '11 camp a little while in the wilderness. 

Then we 're going home." 

The effect is overwhelming ; the hero of many battles can- 



Cj6 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

not refrain from tears. The committee comes in, reports 
that they are wilHng to give up the lands, but that they 
wish either to lease or to buy the land, and they will not 
come so near the old relation as to be employed by their 
former masters. The assembly endorses by sullen silence 
or bursting sobs and groans. Meeting breaks up. The 
judge tries to beckon his late beloved people to him. 
They hold back. He gets one man by the hand. " Why, 
don't you know me. Jack } " After a vacant stare and one 
or two noes, he answers : " I used to know you." But of 
his hundred ex-slaves, only a half-dozen of the most forlorn 
and the raggedest of the women are drawn out to shake 
hands and to show any obsequiousness. The judge goes 
home, calls together his clients, whose hundred thousand 
acres he represents. The next day he reports that the 
planters will yield the point of employment and lease 
or sell the lands. What the final result may be is not 
known. Here is a scene for Carpenter's brush or Whit- 
tier's pen. Let us remember that this people, who are 
lifting up imploring hands to us, are not the barbarous 
Indians, who have faced us in warfare across the continent, 
and with whom we have broken faith ; but a Christian race 
whose labor has enriched our country and whose blood 
has been poured out that our nation might live. 



LETTER XXXni. 

LEGISLATURE FRAMING MISCHIEF INTO LAW FOR BLACK 
PEOPLE. — BLACK MEN's HEROISM. 

Montgomery, Ala., December 4, 1865. 

Thank providence ! The fourth day of December has 

come. Loyal men in these parts have been praying, " Fly 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



97 



swift, ye wheels of time." And now the men who were 
elected along with Abraham Lincoln are met in Congress 
with the instruction of the recent canvass to execute the 
Testament of Freedom. We arrived at the Capitol just 
in time to witness the passage in both houses of the reso- 
lutions approving the amendment to the United States 
Constitution. They passed the House by a vote of seventy- 
five to fifteen ; the Senate, by twenty-three to four. The 
legislature then expressed its interpretation of the amend- 
ment thus : " It does not confer upon Congress the 
power to legislate upon the political status of the freed- 
men in this state." And The Advertiser xoxuzxV?, : " If we 
can retain the power to make and administer laws in the 
states, what matters it if we have to pass the amendment 
and give the negro a political status .-' " And so just now 
the legislature is in the travail of negro legislation. These 
proposed bills provide that if a negro breaks his contract 
he forfeits his wages and becomes a vagrant, and may be 
tried for the same before a justice of the peace, who, if the 
master will not receive him back, shall hire him out for the 
rest of the year, and the proceeds go to a negro pauper 
fund — involuntary servitude restored! But there is no 
penalty upon the employer for his breach of the contract. 
A fine of $ioo to ;^i,ooo is to be imposed upon any man 
who sells or gives rations to or hires a freedman who has 
broken his contract, and in the same penalty every steam- 
boat is forbidden to transport any such contract breaker. 
Moreover, to keep negroes from getting land to rent, or 
from squatting on wild land, the renter is made responsi- 
ble for all the negro's taxes, rations, and clothing, and the 
owner of the wild land is held in the same way. What 
does this mean .•* It means, as a member said to one of 
our number in the lobby, " to keep the negroes down, to 



98 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

keep them from rising." When I meet the maimed and 
the sorrowing white people here, when I see their desolate 
land, my heart melts ; but when I strike these legislatures, 
five of them in session, my blood boils. 

But what shall be said of this wholesale killing and 
maiming of the negroes without cause .-' I have no heart 
to give more than specimens of reports that have come to 
me all along. At Jackson, Mississippi, General Chetlain, 
commander of that department, told me that within forty 
miles of that city, going out on an official trip, he found 
seven negroes killed. He also said that in two months 
within his district of nine counties there had been an aver- 
age of one black man killed every day. Colonel Thomas, 
Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, told 
me that there had been a daily average of two or three 
black men killed in that state by the citizens. At Mobile, 
Colonel Yerrington, officer of the Bureau, told me that 
there had been thirty-eight black men murdered in his dis- 
trict of six counties in three months. The official reports 
of killing, maiming, outraging, are simply dreadful. 

Per contra to this framing of mischief into law and to 
this wholesale murder, take some instances of black men's 
heroism and magnanimity. When the other day the Mis- 
sissippi steamers Niagara and Post Boy collided and the 
former was sinking in twenty feet of water, all was con- 
sternation. Ladies were running hither and thither for 
help. A colored deck-hand deliberately tied one end of a 
rope about his body and the other around a stick of wood, 
and then, throwing in the stick, jumped overboard, swim- 
ming to the end of the rope ; he then turned over on his 
back and calmly called to two white ladies, strangers to 
him, one of them with a baby in her arms, to jump and 
catch hold of the stick. They responded to his solicita- 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



99 



tions, and plunged in and seized the stick. Striking for 
shore with his heavy burden, against a strong current, he 
drew them until they touched bottom and all were saved. 
But, to do this, he had to leave his trunk, with a good suit 
of clothes and ^300 of money in it, to go to the bottom. 
An eye-witness on the boat told Mr. Alvord the story, and 
said that nothing was done by the captain or passengers 
either to re-imburse the black man or to compliment his her- 
oism. Oh, no; he was only a "nigger." Take another. 
Captain Pease, Bureau Superintendent of Education in Lou- 
isiana, described to me the behavior of the colored troops at 
Port Hudson, where he was himself engaged. He said that 
four times they charged up those works and never wavered 
till the last time. He confirmed the story concerning 
eight or ten black men who lost their lives in trying to 
rescue General Paine or to give him a drink. Wounded, 
he lay behind a log, safe from the enemy's guns. When 
volunteers were called for to rescue him, a thousand offered, 
but he ordered them not to remove him, as that would call 
the enemy's fire and kill him. He lay there till he was 
brought off under cover of night. Put along with this the 
fact that the blacks did not rise in insurrection when the 
men were all away and it was in the negroes' power to 
destroy old men, women, and children. The people here 
expected it, and now wonder that it was not done. But 
let them go on with their cruel class legislation against 
those who have learned to use the sword and bayonet and 
the alphabet, and then see if there is not a war of races. 
And I can see no other purpose entertained by them but 
by black codes to keep the freedmen in a condition equiv- 
alent to slavery. It rests, then, with Congress to put 
this matter beyond a doubt. 

Yesterday I went to the Presbyterian and Methodist 



lOO PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 

churches, hoping to hear some notice given of the national 
Thanksgiving service on next Thursday, as an honest 
expression of their love for President Johnson. But there 
was no such thing. Yet in the loyal Baptist and Metho- 
dist churches such notices were given. We also found 
their pulpits open to us with a genuine southern courtesy, 
as we have every-where found them. It has been a blessed 
realization of years of prayer and labor to be permitted 
to preach the gospel to these ransomed bondmen. Shall 
we turn our backs upon these who have fought for us 
and prayed for us and are still with us in prayer and in 
all the sympathy of their exuberant nature .-' We meet 
here General Wager Swayne in the fullness of service as 
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. 



LETTER XXXIV. 

THE CITY SHELLED AND BURNED. — COLORED PEOPLE'S 
BIG MEETINGS. 

Charleston, S. C, December i8, 1865. 
What can I say of this famous city so soon after that 
fine series of articles which appeared in The Independent 
last April, giving account of the flag-raising at Sumter .-* 
And yet even from them I had not realized the extent 
of destruction by shot and shell. It is the old nest of 
treason whose brood has been destroyed, and now the 
bird of liberty is building here her home. The geography 
of the harbor, with its cordon of forts, had been so 
accurately photographed upon my mind by this four years' 
process that I should have known my whereabouts if I 
had been transported to it blindfold. There has as yet 
been no re-building, but the remaining stores and dwell- 



THE END OF THE WAR. lOI 

ings are full and the rents are high. The city was more 
completely prostrated than any that I have yet seen. 
Here we find in the Bureau General Saxton, whose name 
has been so honorably associated with the freeing, arming, 
and elevating of the bondmen. These colored people 
excel, I find, in the magnetic power of their big meetings. 
The editor of The Independent remembers the mass of 
humanity animated with high emotion, before which he 
stood in Zion Church in this city. The same house was 
crowded on Thanksgiving day, and the service was continued 
from 10.30 A.M. to 3 P.M. The exercises consisted of exultant 
songs, prayers, and addresses of gratitude. An eye-witness 
has described three meetings to me, held last summer by 
Rev. M. French, chaplain, and General Wild. The first was 
a Fourth of July celebration in Augusta, Ga., where a 
procession moved through the streets led by a colored 
regiment, and then, ten thousand strong, listened to an 
oration by James Lynch, a colored man, whose address 
I have read in pamphlet form and admired for its good 
sense and eloquence. Two days after they held a freed- 
men's meeting at Edgefield, S. C, in a beautiful grove 
surrounding the academy. Within a few rods lay the 
remains of Preston S. Brooks, "the bully," the assassin 
of Sumner, while his own slaves and those of his neigh- 
bors, to the number of three thousand, lift up their voices 
in loud acclaim, "We are free! we are free!" When it 
was announced that the government will defend and 
maintain that freedom, the response was like the sound 
of many waters. The next mass-meeting was held in 
Washington, Ga., the home of Senator Toombs, of 
Bunker Hill notoriety, and in a grove adjoining his 
beautiful homestead. At that time Toombs was a fugitive 
in the swamps not twenty miles away, hunted as a 
criminal, while the freedmen were singing, — 



I02 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

^ "Blow ye the trumpet, blow! 

The year of jubilee is come ! 
Return, ye ransomed bondmen, home ! " 

The whole scene was bearing a transfiguration glow. 
This Washington was also the place where Jeff Davis 
had lost heart, dismissed his body-guard, and started off 
in disguise, a fugitive from justice. 

In spite of the oppression yet abiding upon this people, 
it is interesting to observe the aspiration and the endeavor 
to come up by self-development out of the ignorance 
which slavery has enforced. They have seized upon the 
great power of the age, the newspaper. At New Orleans 
we found The Ti'ibujic, a daily, owned and edited by 
colored men ; at Mobile, The Natio7ialist, a weekly ; at 
Augusta, The Colored American ; at Beaufort, ThcC New 
So7(th ; at Nashville, The Colored Tennesseean. The Re- 
ligions Recorder is the organ of the African Methodist 
Episcopal Church, published in Philadelphia. And now 
The Leadcf appears in this city, and it lies before me as I 
write in the Charleston hotel. And now the number of 
newspapers which negroes own and manage is one hun- 
dred and five. 

At Savannah we found six teachers from the American 
Missionary Association, with three hundred children and 
over a hundred women as pupils. Rev. J. W. Alvord, who 
accompanied the army of General Sherman when it 
entered that city, immediately opened these schools for 
the colored people. In Charleston we find a school of 
ten hundred and fifty scholars under Rev. F. L. Cardoza, 
with fifteen teachers from the American Missionary 
Association, and six from the Freedmen's Commission. 

At Beaufort lives Robert Small, captain of The Planter, 
which he now runs as the head-quarters' boat. The day 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



103 



we were there he said that he had intended to deposit 
nine hundred dollars in the Freedmen's Bank, but as he 
had found a farm for sale by a man who had bought it at 
a United States tax sale, he invested it in that piece of 
real estate. Who knows but that the government will 
next break its faith in regard to these tax titles ? Small 
had been a slave in Charleston ; had been hired out by 
his master as assistant pilot of Tlie Planter; having 
learned the ropes and the signals, he formed the plan of 
capturing a prize. He opened the plan to a few trusty 
ones of the crew, got his family upon another boat, 
watched the time when the white captain, the mate, and 
the pilot were ashore, and when the officers of the other 
boat were all on land ; then got rid of the untrusty ones 
in the crew, made steam at two o'clock in the morning, 
with the harbor guard on the dock, steamed up to the 
other boat, took on his family and the trusty ones of the 
other crew ; then down past Sumter, raising the signals, 
which were answered "all right"; and then steering 
for the United States fleet and for that fame which will 
be perpetuated in the history of the nation saved. 



LETTER XXXV. 

EMANCIPATION CELEBRATED BY EX-SLAVES. 

Richmond, Va., New Year's Day, 1866. 
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the 
Lord." I have been looking forward to this time, think- 
ing that " I must by all means keep this feast that cometh 
at " Richmond. And here I am at the heart of the late 
slave-holders' confederacy, enjoying the freedmen's celebra- 
tion of the Proclamation of Emancipation. I can not 



I04 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

realize that this imposing ceremony symboUzes the fixed 
fact of freedom. The service was held in the African Baptist 
church, where, as it is the largest house in the city, on the 
seventh of last month, the magnates of the rebellion tried 
to fire anew the southern heart. The house is beautifully 
festooned with evergreens, while across one of the gal- 
leries the green is intertwined with significant crape and 
white. The only motto is upon the wall above the pulpit : 
"This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." 
I never saw humanity so closely packed before. There 
must have been three thousand people in the house, while 
at the twenty-five open doors and windows stood vast 
crowds for two and a half hours in the rain, multitudes 
going away for lack of hearing-room. Robert Johnson, a 
colored man, presided with dignity, introducing each of the 
five colored speakers with brief and pertinent remarks. 
Mr. James Holmes offered a prayer of thanksgiving. 

Of course I can not give you a full report of the 
addresses. They were all made with a manly elocution and 
with no more imperfectness of language than you will 
hear where half a dozen country politicians harangue the 
people from the stump. In oratory as a fine art I think 
that this people are bound to attain eminence. All of 
them made a devout reference of all these blessings to God 
as the Author, and to Abraham Lincoln as the instrumcn". 
The memory of that man is embalmed in the hearts ( 
these people. Next to him are the soldiers. All exhorted 
to behave better on this day than on any other ; all urged 
industry, enterprise, education, patience. One man con- 
trasted this New Year's with the last one. One said that 
he had been thrown into Richmond jail, and then sold 
and sent handcuffed to New Orleans, leaving his children, 
whom he has never seen since, and all because his father- 



THE END OF THE WAR. 



105 



in-law and his mother-in-law had run away to Massachu- 
setts and he had received a letter from them. One told of 
an old colored man who had once waited on Abraham 
Lincoln, who told him that if he ever came to be President 
he would do all he could to set them free. Another said 
the day the Yankees came in was like the day of conver- 
sion : both times we shouted ; we were new men both 
times. A gray-haired man said he was too young to 
speak, for he was only born on the third of last April. 
" But where to-day is the auction-block that stood down 
there ivorn smooth ? Where is its auctioneer ? He was 
seen the other day peddling papers." One man recited 
with magnetic effect the song of Whittier : — 

"Oh, praise and t'anks ! de Lord he come 
To set the people free. 
Ole massa t'ink it day of doom, 
But we of jubilee. 
The yam will grow, 
The cotton blow, 
We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
Oh, neber you fear 
If neber you hear 
The driver blow his horn." 

The fine band of the twenty-fourth Massachusetts, with 
twenty pieces, by order of Major-General Terry, was 
present, and it did seem as if all the good people in the 
old Bay State were laughing and shouting through those 
brazen throats. A banquet had been prepared for these 
brave men of the horn. Indeed, Massachusetts, in all her 
service, seemed to stand among the states as Abraham 
Lincoln among men. 

Yesterday I had the honor of preaching in this African 
church to a congregation of twelve hundred. There is a 
tradition here that Lowell Mason, when here twelve years 



I06 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

ago, remarked that he knew the only two choirs in Christen- 
dom that kept perfect time — that at Munich and this at 
Richmond. Professor Hickok recently preached in this 
church from the text, " The desire of all nations shall 
come ; " and, as it was said, was carried away with his 
subject and his audience. These people are now drawing 
off from all the old white churches, both because they are 
no longer wanted there and because they prefer to be 
by themselves. They now want ecclesiastical as well as 
civil freedom. The presbytery in this city says that they 
have lost the confidence of the colored people. The 
synod of South Carolina mourns the same thing. All 
encouragement ought to be given to the southern churches 
in their efforts for the good of the blacks. But the fact 
is that they are now thrown mostly upon the north for 
sympathy and aid. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

GENERAL THOMAS. — GENERAL FISK. THE VIRGINIA 

LEGISLATURE. 

Washington, D. C, January 8, 1866. 
On my way to this city I had the pleasure of the com- 
pany of Major-General George H. Thomas and Briga- 
dier-General Clinton B. Fisk, both of whom, as well as 
myself, had been summoned to appear before the Con- 
gressional Committee on Reconstruction. That grand old 
warrior, a native Virginian, remarked that the problem of 
social reconstruction, the hardest yet to be accomplished, 
was to be solved only by sending down missionaries who 
should set up a better style of things. The Freedmen's 
Commissioner has just come from the uneasy state of 



THE END OE THE WAR. lO/ 

Kentucky, which by rejecting the constitutional amend- 
ment has tried to open the grave of slavery and to re- 
animate the defunct carcass. Before New Year's the 
general had received three thousand letters bewailing the 
impending "insurrection." He had also had instructions 
from President Johnson to go down into north Alabama 
to ferret out a reported plot for insurrection there. Taking 
:some of his aids, all in citizen's dress, he came to the in- 
fested district and traced up the matter to the reputed 
head-center, an old colored shoemaker, who was found 
pounding upon his last. Working up gradually to the 
subject, the general at last plumply charged the man of 
the shoe-knife with preaching insurrection. It was denied. 
" Well, what did you do then ^ " " Why, bless you, massa, 
I was only preaching about the resurrection! " 

While at Richmond, coming in from a call on the loyal 
Van Lew family and a visit to St. John's Church, where 
Patrick Henry, before the Virginia House of Delegates, 
had made that famous speech, " Give me liberty, or give 
me death," and passing, in the square, the equestrian 
statue of Washington, and in the rotunda the bust of 
Lafayette, set there in 1781, and the statue of Washing- 
ton, set up in 1788, and then entering the halls of legisla- 
tion, where were venerable men, men of the old school, 
I tried to forget the last five years and to feel a 
real respect to the " F. F. V.'s"; but almost the first 
topic that came up was a bill to prevent all negroes 
not now in the state from settling within its bounds ! 
Besides the injustice of this- measure, besides the folly of 
barring out that very labor by which Virginia can be made 
a power again, it is a piece of great ingratitude. For 
many years twenty thousand native Virginians have been 
sold away, making an income of twenty millions to the 



I08 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

State, and now these scattered ones are to be forbidden by 
law to return to their native land. Oh, such prayers as I 
have heard among these people for scattered friends ! 
When I attended the African church in that city, several 
letters were read from the pulpit, inquiring for loved ones 
left behind. Surely our national Constitution, which now 
means liberty, will enforce its decree, that in the several 
states the rights of all the citizens shall be the same as in 
their respective states. Dr. Read had just returned from 
the north with $ii,ooo to re-build his burned church, and 
he is going back to get $10,000 more ; yet while the house 
was burning, one of the members, as told me by other 
members, expressed thanks that it was going up to heaven 
a pure offering, before the foot of a Yankee had pol- 
luted it ! 

Here I am at the national capital after a pilgrimage of 
six thousand miles, having girdled the late confederacy in 
a trip undisturbed by accident or rudeness. This last 
item of testimony I desire to emphasize. I have heard 
and reported the rough things, while I have sought to 
note the encouragements. This heat will pass off. The 
people of the north and of the south will come to know 
each other better and so to respect each other more. No 
man can see this desolation of war and desire to see any 
further visitation of retribution. We are brethren, though 
alienated for a time. We have the glory of our history as 
a common inheritance. We are of the same English 
blood and traditions. We are now to build up our common 
country upon the basis of freedom and national unity. 
We must be forbearing. We are proud of the prowess of 
the south. We must respect their heroic endurance for 
the sake of their convictions. The victors must be 
generous. 



PERIOD V. 

AFTER THE WAR. — TO THE FIRE, 1866-71. 

Soldiers from Congregational Churches in the West. — "Blue Laws" 
of South Carolina. — Iowa Quarter-Centennial. — Chicago Christian 
Commission. — Roll of Boston Council : Analysis of it. — Illinois 
Responds to President Johnson. — Four Western War Books. — 
Abraham Lincoln, "Surveyor." — Grinnell. — Quarter-Millennial of 
Plymouth Rock. 



. LETTER XXXVII. 

SOLDIERS FROM CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES. MINISTERS 

LOCATED SOUTH. "BLUE LAWS " IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 

Chicago, March 20, 1866. 
In order to give some view of the relation of home 
evangelism to patriotism, a circular was sent to the Con- 
gregational churches of the north-west, inquiring the num- 
ber of soldiers sent into the army froni their membership 
and congregations. Of course the results are imperfect. 
Of the 982 churches in the ten states, returns have been 
received from 502. These have reported 2,087 church 
members, or one in four of their male membership, includ- 
ing old men, invalids, and boys. From their congregations 
went 6,121, in all, 8,208, which is an average of sixteen 
from each congregation. If the 480 churches not reported 
have sent in the same proportion, they will have furnished 
1,834 church members and 6,836 of the congregation — in 
all, 8,670. These will make a total of 3,921 from all the 
churches, and a grand total of 16,878, or a Division of 



1 1 PIL G RIM'S LET TERS. 

Western Ironsides. The reported churches sent 158 
officers; they sent 173 sons of ministers. The reported 
churches have lost by death in the army from their congre- 
gations 1,129, or an average of three from each. The 
whole number of deaths would readily reach 3,000, three 
regiments of men, a great sacrifice indeed. The reported 
churches mention 189 conversions among the soldiers in 
the field and 65 young soldiers turning toward the ministry. 
To our delight we find little demoralization among the 
returned soldiers. They went out not as mercenaries, but 
as patriots ; and as soon as their work was done they were 
anxious to return to civic life. The report shows 1,331 of 
the church members " returned with character untar- 
nished." This, when you take out the number killed and 
the number yet in the army, when the circular went forth, 
leaves but a small margin for demoralized men. Indeed, 
many of the reports mark an improvement of morals ; 
thus : " Worst cases come home improved " ; " Our young 
men have for the most part evidently improved in charac- 
ter by the service " ; " Nearly all who returned are improved 
in character " ; " It is not known that any have returned 
with character tarnished " ; " Some have improved in 
piety " ; " Morals of all improved " ; " All but two of the 
ten church members [Ottawa, First Church] promoted for 
good conduct ; one kept up prayer-meetings all the way 
through"; "All seem as good as when they went out." 
It appears that in a great many churches all the members 
liable to military duty were in the service. In some, all 
the male members went out. Sergeant J. E. Griffith, dur- 
ing the assault on Vicksburg, entered one of the enemy's 
forts with a dozen men who were all killed but himself. 
He alone marched several prisoners back to camp. He 
has been sent to West Point by General Grant. Dr. 



AFTER THE WAR. I i i 

Baldwin's College Report for 1865 says that Wabash sent 
275 soldiers ; Iowa, 65 ; Oberlin, 700, of whom 100 fell ; 
of the ^Z alumni of Beloit, 33 were in the army. Of the 
twenty classes of Marietta, each had its representative 
in the war. 

Looking over my notes I find that at Charleston I came 
across Ransom's History of South Carolina, 1808. Much 
has been said of the "blue laws " of New England. Ransom 
says : " The first two acts which have been found in the 
records of the clerk's office enjoined the observance of 
the Lord's day and prohibited idleness, drunkenness, and 
swearing." As to joining Church and State, he says: 
" In 1698 the legislature settled a maintenance on a min- 
ister of the Church of England in Charleston." He also 
says that in 1704, when there was only one Church of 
England to four churches of dissenters, a legislature was 
secured which made a law that required all persons chosen 
members of the Commons, House of Assembly, to con- 
form to the religious worship of the Church of England, 
and to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper accord- 
ing to the rites and usages of that Church. The taxing 
of non-conformists to support the state Church went on 
for seventy years until the Revolution. In 1773 Alexander 
Garden, whom the Bishop of London had sent to be com- 
missary of North and South Carolina and Georgia, sus- 
pended from the ministry, after a short trial, George 
Whitefield for the offence of not always using the prayer- 
book. While preaching in St. Phillips Church in Charles- 
ton his great soul overflowed the set form of prayer, and 
for this he was forbidden to officiate as an Episcopal 
minister. He then drew off and went to preaching in the 
church of the dissenters, called the "white-meeting," but 
in these last years called the Circular Church. Mr. Ran- 



I I 2 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

som also states that the churchmen settled mostly along 
the coast, while the dissenters went into the north and 
the west parts of the state. This tallies with the fact that 
in the Revolution Toryism prevailed on the coast and 
patriotism in the north and the west. 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

IOWA QUARTER -CENTENNIAL. — CHICAGO CHRISTIAN COM- 
MISSION. DR. TARBOX'S ANALYSIS OF ROLL 

OF BOSTON COUNCIL. 

Chicago, June 12, 1866. 

The deliverances of our state associations this season 
have had the patriotic ring. It is demanded that emanci- 
pation be followed by the suffrage and the securing of 
civil rights. The resistance of Congress to the usurpa- 
tion of President Johnson is approved. Illinois declares 
that to remit the emancipated to the disloyal states will be 
to expose us to the retribution of new wars and pecuniary 
losses and divisions and bloodshed. 

July 10, 1866. 

A notable occasion in this city, yesterday, was a reunion of 
the army committee of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, complimentary to Rev. and Mrs. Jeremiah Porter, who 
had just returned from their service among the soldiers at 
Brownsville, Texas. The gathering was at the Sherman 
House, where were assembled forty or fifty of the clergy 
and prominent citizens of Chicago. Mr. J. V. Farwell 
introduced Mr. Porter as the first man who came to Chi- 
cago to preach (1833), the first to go into the army and 
the last to come out. This branch of the Christian Com- 
mission has raised and expended for the good of the soldiers 



AFTER THE WAR, 



113 



$137,658. The Young Men's Christian Association, under 
its president, Mr. D. L. Moody, is moving to build a hall 
that will seat three thousand, to be called Farwell Hall. 
The stock already raised amounts to $103,800. 

An analysis of Dr. Increase Tarbox's catalogue of the 
names of the members of the Boston Council, with their 
places of residence and of birth, and with the birth-places of 
their parents, reveals some curious facts. Of the five hun- 
dred and sixteen members, only ten ministers and three 
laymen were born in the west. Among us western boys 
were Fred W. Beecher, J. M. Sturtevant, Jr., and that Nes- 
tor of the Council, Dr. Leonard Bacon, who was born in 
Detroit. Sixty-three were born in the Middle States ; but 
the parents of almost every one of these were born in New 
England. Fourteen delegates were born in Great Britain ; 
one in France ; five in the south, among them Dr. Blagden 
and Reverends R. C. Dunn and M. W. Fairfield. So that 
four hundred and twenty-one persons were born in New 
England, while most of the others were of that parentage. 
And yet the Council represented twenty-five states and 
territories, reaching across to the Pacific. And this is 
the New England zone. 

I have more authority for Thomas Jefferson's remark 
that the autonomy of the churches would be the best 
plan of government for the American colonies. This is 
found in Belcher's " Religious Denominations." Rev. 
Father Keeler, of Kokomo, Ind., informs me that twenty- 
three years ago, at a council, he met Rev. Mr. Brice, who 
had been a pastor at Richmond, Virginia, and referring to 
this statement by Belcher, Mr. Brice told him that Mr. 
Jefferson had also attended on his ministry in Richmond 
and had made the same remark to him. 



I 14 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER XXXIX. 

pilgrim's rest. 

Chicago, October 16, 1866. 
I WRITE this letter from Pilgrim's Rest, his new home 
on the Lake Shore, peering out from the Douglas Grove. 
President Hitchcock once closed an address in this city by 
wondering whether the people of Chicago appreciated the 
glory of the scenery around them. That morning he had 
climbed to the lookout of the Tremont House and obsen^ed 
the floating ice-field piled on the edge of the lake in grotesque 
masses, which shimmered in the rising sun. And this is 
but one element in the grandeur of this great lake, which 
affords us perpetual and ever-variant beauty. In repose, 
how calm and restful ! Shadowed by clouds, how kaleido- 
scopic its colors ! Kissing the shore in gentle undulations, 
how it soothes and lulls to sleep ! Aroused in storm, jar- 
ring the shore and sprinkling it with spray, how grand ! 
Making its surface a pavement of sapphire, as it sends 
forth the sun to present us his morning salutations, and 
plating its broad expanse with silver as the moon comes 
up to greet our evening chit-chat, how glorious ! You 
never tire of this acquaintance ; it grows upon you in the 
sense of companionship. Though hidden in the forest, 
with this for your only neighbor, you are not lonely. Then 
from this Rest I look out on the great Crib, standing in 
its dignity two miles from the shore, and making haste to 
open its fountains of pure water for the two hundred 
thousand people who wait patiently upon this great enter- 
prise. Neither storms nor floating ice-batteries have 
availed to disturb its repose. Its steam-works are smok- 
ing day and night in tunneling toward the shore, and by- 



AFTER THE WAR. 



115 



and-by it is to mount the friendly light-house for the night- 
bestead and tempest-driven mariner. I have been out in 
the tunnel a mile from the shore. I could hear the splash- 
ing of steamboats overhead. Next to this is the old har- 
bor light, at the end of the great pier ; then comes the 
river's mouth, at which the birds of commerce are seen 
constantly going in and out ; then the great central depot, 
the bee-hive of busy locomotives ; then the frontage of the 
magnificent Michigan Avenue, — all this in view is a grand 
panorama. From this point I have frequently seen twenty- 
five or thirty vessels starting out upon their voyage. 
After the recent storm had raised its embargo of a day, I 
counted at one time one hundred and eighteen vessels 
that were just spreading their sails outside the harbor, pre- 
senting a sweep of four miles of canvas. From this 
point, looking east, with the sun in the west, by that won- 
drous mirage, I have seen the opposite shore, forty miles 
away, lifted into distinctness for a long distance. There 
was the water washing the sand-bank, which rises to a 
considerable height, and there were the crowning ever- 
greens distinctly visible. From the top of his shot tower 
Mr. Blatchford says that by this mirage he has seen Mich- 
igan City over there, even as Bunyan's Pilgrim saw afar 
off the Celestial City. So some hour of unearthly experi- 
ence or some season of bereavement lifts up the hither 
coast of eternity, revealing its shining shore, its City of 
the great King and its heavenly inhabitants, thus bringing 
near the future world and convincing us of its reality. 



Il6 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER XL. 

AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION ANNIVERSARY. 

ILLINOIS* RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 

Chicago, November i6, 1866. 

At the twentieth anniversary of the American Mission- 
ary Association, held in Galesburg, 111., last week, it was 
found that the ^250,000 proffered by the Boston Council 
had been raised to $253,045 in cash, with clothing in value 
to carry it up to $358,486. Well done ! The number of 
workers among the freedmen the last year was three hun- 
dred and fifty-three, of whom two hundred and sixty-four 
were women, and forty-one ministers. The Association 
resolved to try to raise this year $400,000. And so this 
little, despised, testifying organization has become a national 
potency. 

Illinois responds to Andrew Johnson's visit to lay the 
corner-stone of the Douglas Monument by a majority of 
fifty thousand against him. Even Egypt cuts loose from 
him. Hon, B. C. Cook, who has been reelected to Congress 
by a large majority, told upon the stump this story to 
make the blood of men boil : John Gifford, of Lisbon, in 
his district, wounded at Chickamauga, lay on the field six 
days and nights without food or water, was then taken up 
by the rebels, had his leg amputated, was sent to Ander- 
sonville for five months, and came home with a shattered 
constitution. On Mr. Cook's recommendation he was 
made postmaster in his own town, and then he was turned 
out by Andrew Johnson to make room for a copperhead ! 
Of such an one, as our A. J. Junius says : " Truly, my lord, 
you may well be weary of the circuit you have taken ; for 
you have now fairly traveled through every sign in the 



AFTER THE WAR. 



117 



political zodiac, from the scorpion, in which you stung" 
such a mangled soldier ! 



LETTER XLI. 

FOUR WESTERN WAR BOOKS. 

Chicago, April 20, 1867. 
The west is just now presenting to the public four large 
books upon the war. One is " Wisconsin in the War of 
the Rebelhon,'' a portly octavo of eleven hundred and 
eighty pages, from the pen of Rev. W. D. Love, d.d. 
The work contains a history of each of the seventy-three 
separate military organizations which Wisconsin sent to 
the war, an account of one hundred battles and expedi- 
tions, biographical notices of two hundred officers and 
privates, a classified list of the eleven thousand Wisconsin 
dead, twenty-five steel-plate portraits, and seven diagrams. 
The state may well be proud of its major-generals, Wash- 
burn, Schurtz, Hamilton, Cutler, Ruger, Saloman ; its 
brigadiers, Paine, Starkweather, Fairchild, Allen, Hobart, 
Fallows. The loss of Governor Harvey by drowning 
while in the service of the soldiers was a part of the sacri- 
fice. Horatio K. Foote, son of Rev. Hiram Foote, a lad of 
but eighteen, was chief of scouts in the first cavalry. He 
held receipts for more than twenty prisoners, captured by 
his own unaided prowess, while as a shot he " never 
wasted a cartridge." Suffering the horrors of Anderson- 
ville and Florence, he died in the prison of the latter, giv- 
ing up his life rather than enlist in the rebel army, as he 
was solicited to do. " Lincoln and Slavery," an octavo of 
seven hundred and thirty-five pages, is another of these 



Il8 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

books. It is from the pen of Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, late 
member of Congress from this district. It is an effort 
properly to associate the greatest event of modern history, 
the overthrow of American slavery, with the second man 
of our nation. Upon the life of Mr. Lincoln the facts of 
this great accomplishment are strung in harmony and in 
brilliancy. He has set the picture of emancipation in the 
frame of the emancipator's life. The story of the " Patri- 
otism of Illinois" has been told by Rev. T. M. Eddy, d.d., 
editor of The NortJiivcstci-n Christian Advocate of this city, 
in his two octavo volumes. The work is wonderfully well 
done. We are proud that Illinois gave the nation its 
commander-in-chief and its general ; that we sent a quar- 
ter of a million of soldiers to the war ; that without 
authority from Washington we had taken Cairo, that 
strategic point, before the guns that silenced Sumter were 
cool ; that we kept ahead of our quota on every call ; that 
drafting was scarcely resorted to ; and that by increasing 
majorities the voters of the state have endorsed the action 
of the boys in blue. Among the leaders Illinois counts 
Grant, Logan, McClernand, Palmer, Hurlbut, Oglesby, 
Wallace, Ransom, Chetlain, Brayman, Mulligan, Bross, and 
Yates. " Our Branch and its Tributaries " is an octavo 
history of the work of the north-western branch of the 
United States Sanitary Commission, by Mrs. Sarah 
Edwards Henshaw, whose middle name connects her by 
lineal descent with the great theologian of America. 
Upon the skeleton of statistics the authoress has put 
flesh and nerve and color and expression. We have had 
books upon the women of the war, but those gave us only 
the work of a few individuals. Here we find the mass of 
the loyal women of the north-west in their respective com- 
munities, working away in their homes, for four years in 



AFTER THE WAR. I 1 9 

their labor of love, preparing articles of comfort, necessity, 
and delicacy, tiring not amid disheartening influences and 
triumphing all the more gloriously because their field of 
action was so much to the rear. The total receipts of our 
Branch were $411,027.35. 



LETTER XLII. 

A MUD RIDE. — ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Chicago, February 22, 1869. 
I have been to Aledo, Illinois, to prepare the way for 
a new church. The time for the council was set after the 
expected arrival of trains on the branch of the Chicago, 
Burlington, and Ouincy from Galva. But when that time 
came the road was not through by a gap of thirteen miles. 
On Saturday at noon the train leaves me at Windsor. 
No one has come to take me on. It is three miles to the 
end of the track, where a rig may be awaiting me. A 
hand-car is secured by a personal friend, against orders to 
the contrary, and is driven by six leisure men (for track 
laying is under the embargo of mud), who soon dump me 
in the middle of a plowed field. I find no messenger. It 
is five miles to Viola, where I am to preach in the morning 
before going on eight miles to preach at night in Aledo. 
Three or four countrymen decline furnishing a convey- 
ance. No man for money will go through that mud and 
rain. And so, entering a farm-house, I throw aside my 
impedimenta, traveling-shawl, and carpet-bag. I start off 
with umbrella spread to the storm. Now on ordinary 
roads a walk of five miles would not be bad. But such 
mud, so deep, so thick, so heavy in loading the feet ! 
There is no going around it. As I plod along, slipping, 



I20 PILGKIArS LETTERS. 

and sticking, and stalling, and soaking, "one of those 
wicked ones " gets behind this Pilgrim, and steps up softly, 
and whispering, suggests many grievous things, thus : 
"Ah, sorry, weary Pilgrim, all this, and then to be 'nothing 
but an agent ' ; you might have a loving parish, as once 
you had ; you might have your study, with all its mental 
stimulus and its royal joy ; you might be with your family, 
who in your absence have suffered from burglary and sick- 
ness and loneliness ; let some man take this work who is 
not acceptable as a pastor, or one who has no wife or chil- 
dren to long for him ; this plodding and preaching in 
school-houses and little sanctuaries, this universal scattera- 
tion, this continual dealing with the littlest, weakest 
churches, is unworthy of you ; and after all, you are only 
an 'agent,' who is supposed to be a clerical mendicant." 
Just then the Master spoke out : " How is this ? I was 
once myself an itinerant preacher and I went on foot ; the 
disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his 
lord. My servant Paul, in his apostleship, was but a 
planter and trainer of churches." And then I saw that 
the Pilgrim, first ashamed of himself, and then cheered by 
so gracious presence, became light of foot and the walk of 
three hours for five miles seemed short indeed. 

After the morning service a man arrived from Aledo. 
His bright span before a buggy, at the utmost of their 
ability, got us over that eight miles of mud in just three 
hours. But the house is full, and the people are waiting 
to hear the Word. On Monday morning a hack starts 
from Viola to bring the members of the council from the 
end of the rail track, and a four-horse, double-seated 
buggy starts from Aledo to connect at the middle station. 
Four o'clock, the hour of the council, comes, but its 
members do not. Seven o'clock ; the lone preacher is 



AFTER THE WAR. 121 

just rising to go along with the service of institution 
when, to his great joy, in come Dr. Edward Beecher, 
Rev. Mr. Waldo, and a delegate, just alighted from the 
vehicle, chilled by the sharp west wind which they have 
faced all the way, weary and hungry withal. Soon they 
are thawed out. The council is put through. Dr. 
Beecher gives us a grand discourse, and the brotherhood, 
with a deacon ordained by prayer and the laying on of 
hands, is pronounced a duly instituted church of Jesus 
Christ. On Tuesday, back to Viola in three hours. But 
it will be impossible for the relief of the horses to reach 
the train in time, and so we settle down in the tavern 
and give out a notice for a temperance meeting at night. 
House full, three flaming speeches. Wednesday morning, 
four horses, eight miles, three hours, and we are drawn 
up out of the Slough of Despond. But we are back to 
Galva too late for the trains east or west, and so the 
pastors lose their prayer-meetings, and Pilgrim does not 
reach his Rest until morning. You Boston pastors, think 
of your former associate, Dr. Beecher, thus drawn through 
the mud to set up a little church! Do you pity him? 
It was his joy. It brought to mind an earlier trip. 
President Beecher and Professor Sturtevant were coming 
up to Chicago, two hundred and twenty-five miles, in a 
one-horse buggy on a mission. Driving into the Mack- 
inaw the forward axle drops down from the box, and 
away to the other side go the horse and fore-wheels, 
while the doctors jump into the stream up to their 
shoulders to catch their luggage, and the buggy goes 
tumbling down stream. Mr. Beecher, with a hooked pole, 
goes a-fishing — he says he was with his father upon that 
traditional fishing excursion — for the truant buggy, and, 
getting a good hold, he pulls it ashore. Some man brings 



122 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

back the horse and cart, all is made fast, and now they 
go over safely, and turn in at the nearest cabin, and open 
and dry their wardrobe. My own experience of that mud 
was awarded by a find in Aledo. Within an ancient book 
at the recorder's office in that place I found the original 
plot of the town of New Boston, made in 1836, and 
bearing this certificate : — 

I do certify that the above is an accurate plot of the town of New 
Boston as surveyed by me. 

A. LLNCOLN, 
For Peter ButUr, surz'eyor of the Co. of Warren 
and the attached parts thereof. 

Afterward this same deputy surveyor became the Sur- 
veyor General for the United States. There having been 
a contest for a hundred years as to the line known as 
Mason and Dixon's, this high official (as when two 
farmers fall out in the same way) determined to run the 
line for himself. And instead of trying to confirm the 
old survey he starts at the coast and rims out to sea as 
far as his jurisdiction extends, and then keeps out from 
land around the point of Florida, through the Gulf, and 
up the coast of the Pacific. He then issues a proclama- 
tion, making that his Mason and Dixon's line, and 
decreeincr freedom over all the inside domain. 



LETTER XLIII. 

CATHOLIC MISSION. PRAIRIE EVANGELISM. FOREIGN 

MISSIONARIES. 

Saint Joseph, Mich., August 4, 1869. 

Blessed saint ! patron of peaches and strawberries. 

Two hundred thousand bushels of peaches, with other 

fruits to match in quantity, sent to market from this 



AFTER THE WAR. 



123 



region the last year, to reach an income of three quarters 
of a milHon dollars ! Two hvnidred years ago, in 1669, 
Father Allouez, who in 1666 had founded a mission at 
the falls of the Saint Mary among the Indians, discovered 
this place. Four years later Allouez and Marquette made 
a circuit of Lake Michigan in canoes, discovering and 
naming the rivers and bays. The river emptying here 
they called the Saint Joseph. In 1679 La Salle came to 
Mackinaw and thence around Lake Michigan to this 
point, where he built a fort of hewn logs, forty by eighty 
feet, clearing away the timber for two musket shots, for 
readier protection against the Indians. In 1700 the 
Jesuits founded a mission here upon a spot now known 
as the Indian Orchard, some of whose apple-trees yet 
remain. In 1720 Charlevoix visited the mission. In 
1762 Pontiac, who had devised a plan for taking all the 
French forts west of Niagara, captured this one. In 1822 
Rev. Isaac McCoy, under the Baptist Board, established 
a mission among the Indians up the river as far as where 
Niles now is. It was not until 1829 that a white settle- 
ment was begun at Saint Joseph. In 1804 the United 
States government desired to build a fort at this place. 
The Indians, not yet having ceded this tract, refused to 
have it located here. Then, as an alternative, the fort was 
located across the lake at the mouth of a vastly inferior 
river, where the town of Chicago afterward came to be 
built. Captain Napier, who has sailed these lakes for 
forty years, tells me that when he first began to visit this 
port it was quite superior in its business importance to the 
one over at Fort Dearborn. 

Grinnell, Iowa. 

Imagine yourself set down in a sea of prairie, looking 

" as if the ocean, in his mildest swell, had remained fixed 



124 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

and motionless forever." The horizon all the way around 
shuts down on the green waves, except that in the south- 
west there appears the terra firma of a grove. No mark 
of human life is in sight, only as that speck in the edge of 
the woods may indicate a prairie schooner or a squatter's 
cabin. But now, as you look and wonder, an object looms 
up in the east. It turns out to be the vehicle of a young 
city pastor from New York, to whom Horace Greeley 
had originally said : " Go west, young man, and grow up 
with the country." He comes up to yon crowning center, 
and, taking in the sweep, proclaims himself monarch of 
all he surveys. He lays his title upon six thousand acres. 
He decrees a college there, and for himself a seat in 
Congress. All this is back in the mysterious past, in the 
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty- 
four. 

Again, at midnight, you are set down at that same 
center of the horizon. As day comes on and you look 
out, behold ! the sea has become dry land. You observe 
that since your last visit little groves have been dotted 
in over the wide expanse, which seems also to have been 
cleft asunder by the plowing of a highway. Presently 
over this track comes thundering along a train marked 
" Pacific," and by its side runs a cable, not trans-oceanic, 
but trans-continental. And so, without farther reckoning, 
you find that you are on the commercial equator and a 
little past the meridian of the nineteenth century. Was it 
strange that the mid-century had centered its civilization 
at that conjuncture } You find a city of two thousand, 
whose mayor, Henry G. Little, must have little to do, 
since there has never yet been a lawsuit among his people, 
since liquor has never been sold nor a drunken man seen 
within his domain, and since there has never been a fire 



AFTER THE WAR. 



125 



or a cyclone within his corpoiation. You find steam mills 
and elevators, a first-class hotel, brick blocks, a park of 
twenty acres, well-shaded, churches, the veritable college 
that was fore-ordained and is now in the glow of com- 
mencement, and all surrounded with thrifty farms. And 
now where do you find yourself to be ? Why, at the 
place which bears the name of its founder, that little man 
who first planted his buoy upon the ocean prairie, who 
seems yet to be a factotum in all its affairs, and who has 
already occupied and honored his seat in Congress, the 
Rev. and Hon. J. B. Grinnell. 

Chicago, September 28, 1869. 
This sending away of foreign missionaries is coming to 
be a reality to us in the west. Heretofore they have been 
sent from your coast eastward. We have read of your 
farewell meetings. We have imagined the scenes. Even 
when we felt our first missionary thrill, upon the occasion 
of ordaining five of our seminary men for the field 
abroad, we did not add to this the experience of a good-by 
meeting. They too sailed from your shores. But now the 
course of missionary journeying is changed in part. It 
seemed a strange event that seven missionaries, starting for 
China, were coming this way. Yet they were now taking 
the direct course. We welcomed them. It did us good 
to see them. We sent them along with our blessing. 
Their passing by us was the preaching of a missionary 
sermon, which was extended across the continent, as they 
traversed this highway of the Lord cast up for the messen- 
gers of his Word. A first-class caterer to missionary occa- 
sions is Secretary Humphrey, here at the halfway place. 
It was a union meeting. The veteran missionary. Dr. 
Scudder, from his advanced position on the Pacific, had 



126 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

come to receive and cheer along this apostolic company. 
His eloquence and his personal knowledge of the foreign 
work served the cause grandly. 

The names of the missionaries are Rev. and Mrs. D. 
Z. Sheffield, Rev. and Mrs. J. L. Whiting, Rev. and Mrs. 
D. C. McCoy, and Miss Mary Thompson. Ohio, Illinois, 
Wisconsin, and Iowa were represented in this sacred 
number. And so the west is falling into line. Six others 
are soon to follow, destined to the same field. 



LETTER XLIV. 

THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH 
YEAR OF THE PLYMOUTH ROCK LANDING. 

Chicago, April 30, 1870. 
We are proud to have the Pilgrim reunion brought to 
our western home. We feel much as a well-to-do son who 
receives to his own home his honored parents, and who, 
from filial affection and reverence, delights to do all in his 
power to make them happy. Five hundred delegates, 
coming from Maine and from California, and from all the 
region between, have been entertained, and as many as 
four hundred have been received into the homes of per- 
sonal friends. Dr. Edward Beecher served as temporary 
chairman, and B. W. Tompkins as the permanent. Dr. 
Leonard Bacon made an instructive opening address upon 
the difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims : 
the former held to a reformation inside of a state 
church ; the latter were " separatists," and held to coming 
out from the corrupt churches and making pure organiza- 
tions on the scriptural model. The latter, few at first, 
despised and persecuted even unto death, proved victori- 



AFTER THE WAR. \2'J 

ous in the end. In New England the Puritans fell in with 
the ideas of the Pilgrims. We are met here to-day from 
the breadth of a continent to commemorate the saintly- 
virtues of these heroic servants of God. Before us here 
is a photograph of the members of the Boston National 
Council when they stood around the forefathers' rock. 
One of the moments of my life which stands out clearest 
and brightest in my memory is the time when we, a thou- 
sand of us nearly, gathered from every state between the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, sat upon Burial Hill, proud of 
the declaration of our faith, transmitted to us by the men 
who were buried there. 

Dr. T. M. Post delivered a beautiful and eloquent 
address upon "The Occasion and the Situation." The 
one thing that the Convention did as to measures was to 
initiate the permanent Triennial National Council. Dr. 
H. M. Dexter made report of the plans and of the 
methods of the Jubilee Executive Committee appointed at 
New York for increasing the interest of young and old in 
this work by circulating memoranda of historical facts 
concerning the Pilgrims, by the use of books of memorial 
record, and by the sale of memorial medals to children 
and others. An interesting letter was read from the 
Church of the Pilgrimage at Plymouth, Mass. The fol- 
lowing action was also taken : — 

Resolved, That the triumph of ideas and principles of the fathers 
in the late civil contest, emancipating and enfranchising four millions 
of blacks, and giving nearly equally important disenthrallment to eight 
millions of whites, imposes a vast responsibility and offers a grand 
opportunity for the dissemination of the religion of the Pilgrims ; and 
in this memorial year of their landing on these shores we pledge our- 
selves to renewed effort to preach the gospel and plant its institutions 
in the south. 



128 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

The Pilgrim Celebration, the Triennial, and the Anni- 
versary were held here the same week and by the same 
people, largely ; but they had no other relation to each other 
than that of contiguity, comity, and co-working. The semi- 
nary graduated fourteen young men and had eloquent ad- 
dresses from President E. O. Haven and Rev. Joseph P. 
Thompson, d.d., and inaugurated Dr. J. T. Hyde as pro- 
fessor of pastoral theology and special studies. The 
Triennial received reports of the three past years of the 
seminary's operations, elected directors for the same, and 
participated in the exercises of the Anniversary. The 
treasurer, Dr. G. S. F. Savage, reported the net assets as 
$254,036. The whole week was a grand tripartite occasion, 
three in form, one in essence. An adjunct of the week 
was a conference of the secretaries of the Home Mission- 
ary Society, coming from Maine and California. Dr. J. H. 
Warren, who had been forty days in going out to Califor- 
nia, had come back in six, and by rail, as he had promised 
on going out. 



PERIOD VI. 

FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL, 1871-76. 

The Chicago Fire. — National Council. — Tour in Connecticut. — The 
Ohio an Ancient Highway. — An Exploration of Colorado. — Among 
the Dakotas. — The Boston Fire. — Philo Carpenter. — Lake Supe- 
rior. — Lone Star State. — The Woods of Northern Michigan. 



LETTER XLV. 

THE CHICAGO FIRE. 

Chicago, October 12, 1871. 
Desolation, desolation ! A broad swath mowed down 
on the west side. On the South Side the business heart 
of the city eaten out. The north side literally swept 
away, only one house having been spared. The north 
division, a city of itself of seventy-five thousand, with 
water-works, gas-works, homes, business places, a dozen 
stone sanctuaries and many wooden, but all swept away. 
On the South Side a half-dozen of the best churches in 
the city gone. The New England Church and that of her 
daughter, the Lincoln Park Church, are lost, and not a 
family of these churches is left with a home. During the 
fire thousands gathered on the lake shore to escape the 
flying fire, and many of these had to sprinkle themselves 
to keep off the flames. Even in the midst of such terror 
the ludicrous would appear. A burly Irishman, espying a 
judge who was wetting himself down to keep from catch- 
ing fire, drew himself up before "his honor," and spoke 



130 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

his mind, thus : " And, Joodge, it was a joodgmint from 
hiven upon ye, for ye did n't joodge right! " Many thou- 
sands lay out on the prairie over-night. On that same 
Monday night, by the Hght reflected from the heavens, I 
could read the door-plate of our home at Oak Park, nine 
miles westward. On the train that brought home some of 
the friends that had been on to the American Board, there 
were persons who represented two and a half millions of 
loss. One of these, whose wealth was only moderate, said 
that the seven or eight thousand that he had given away 
the last year had all been saved. On Monday, as I fell in 
with Mr. T. B. Bryan, of the " Fidelity Safe," he and I 
tried to work our way into it, adjoining the old Sherman 
House ; but it was impossible for us to reach the place, 
because of the heat. He told me afterwards that when he 
did come to open that treasure house in the presence of 
his patrons, he saw upon those hot, tumbled bricks such 
dancing as he had never seen in Paris, when the men 
came to find that these deposits, all they had left, were safe ! 
The heat ! Why, it melted down iron, glass, brick, stone, 
into a conglomerate, and Mrs. Pilgrim has a ton of that 
material piled up as a monument. The Academy of 
Science stood entirely detached. Its iron doors and shut- 
ters were closed. I saw it burn. It was a back fire, going 
against the wind. And yet such was the superambient 
heat that through the shutters and walls it set fire to the 
inside material, whose flames burst through the iron doors 
outward. The total loss is estimated at $300,000,000. 

October 18, 1871. 
How grand this testimonial of charity ! Two mill- 
ions, six hundred and sixty dollars already received in 
cash, besides the hundreds and hundreds of car-loads of 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 131 

clothing and provisions. It comes from every part of the 
land. It comes from over the ocean. It is all needed ; 
all worthily conferred. It will be wisely disbursed. Two- 
thirds of the business capital of the city was consumed. 
Dr. E. F. Williams, up among the Indians of the north- 
west, heard in a few hours of the burning. A citizen just 
home from Europe told me that seven hundred miles out 
he had heard of it from a pilot whom they had picked up 
on the coast. The pastor of the New England Church, 
hunting in the dibris for a memento, found a piece of a 
black and charred leaf of a pulpit hymn-book and on it 
read : — 

Daughter of Zion ! awake from the dust, 

Exalt thy fallen head ; 
Re-build thy walls ; thy bounds enlarge. 

And send thy heralds forth. 
Say to the South, " Give up thy charge, 

And keep not back, O North." 

The hymn was sung at their first re-opening of service. 



LETTER XLVI. 

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL. 

Oberlin, Ohio, November 21, 1871. 
This is the first in the series of National Triennial Coun- 
cils now established. It has been in session for six days. 
It has had three hundred members. It received reports 
from the national societies and theological seminaries. It 
burnished its constitution theologically. It heard the 
jubilee singers, to be moved by them to tears. It gave the 
New England Church of Chicago the right hand of material 
fellowship. It received President Finney, and, by request. 



132 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

heard from him on the subject of Euduement with Power, 
only to invite him to preach to the body on the same topic, 
on both of which occasions its members were deeply moved. 
It assisted in laying the corner-stone of Council Hall for 
the theological department of Oberlin College, at which 
service the moderator, Rev. W. I. Budington, d.d., made 
the speech of the week when he said : " We stand on the 
grave of buried prejudice." It heard from Dr. H. O. 
Butterfield, secretary of the college society, the speech of 
his life, and from Rev. Joseph E. Roy, a paper on Home 
Missions. It denounced caste as in connection with our 
northern churches, schools, and colleges, and at the south 
also, as the great hindrance to the harmonious organization 
of society there. After the address of Secretary Strieby, 
it re-indorsed the American Missionary Association as 
raised up and signally adapted to take the foremost place 
in the accomplishment of the education and the moral 
elevation of the freedmen ; recommended that four hun- 
dred thousand dollars should be annually contributed by 
our churches for this purpose ; and commended its seven 
colleges and theological schools to the special consider- 
ation of benevolent men in reference to needed buildings 
and endowments. It gave special approbation to the work 
of the Home Missionary Society and of the Congrega- 
tional Union and the College Society. 



LETTER XLVII. 

AFTER THE FIRE. 

Chicago, January 8, 1872. 

It is now three months since the fire. The grain heaps 

of two elevators are yet smouldering and flaming, notwith- 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 



133 



Standing the floods of water that have been poured on and 
the cargoes of wheat that have been raked out and 
shipped. Two thousand wooden shanties and houses have 
gone up, and three hundred one, two, and three story brick 
buildings. Thus far the trowel has not ceased its click 
for more than five days on account of the cold. On one 
wall, up high, I counted five furnace fires burning for the 
warming of fingers and toes. One of our oldest archi- 
tects publishes a statement that of the sixteen miles of 
available building front in the burnt district of the south 
side, nine and a half miles, previous to the fire, had been 
occupied by offices, manufactories, banks, hotels, and stores ; 
and six and a half miles by dwellings, churches, school- 
houses, and other public buildings. There were nearly 
three miles of five and six story cut-stone and iron build- 
ings, many of them of the most costly character, equal in 
architectural appearance to any buildings on the continent. 
He is confident that three miles of front will be re-built 
this year within this district for commercial purposes, and 
that the new will equal the old. The nineteen national 
banks are justifying the assurance given by the United 
States comptroller after inspection as to their soundness. 

February 27, 1872. 
A report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society brings 
out a total of $3,335,700, with a balance on hand of 
$1,314,269. This, besides all the scores of railway trains 
of provisions and clothing. Thanks to God for this world- 
wide uprising of charity ! The people of twenty-two 
nationalities have been the recipients of this bounty. 



134 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER XLVIII. 

A MISSIONARY TOUR. • 

Connecticut, April 30, 1872. 
We are going over this state in a two months' series of 
missionary conventions. Our seven national societies are 
represented. We have Rev. Doctors Langworthy, Tar- 
box, Strieby, Barrows, Gushing, Butterfield, and missionary 
Tyler from South Africa, and all led by Secretary W. H. 
Moore. At the west I am always wondering where the 
Yankees out there ever came from. Here, as I learn of 
their migrating, I wonder where they all go to. Connecti- 
cut, as if yet claiming sovereignty over her belt across the 
land, still persists in bringing her representatives from 
those parts into all legislative bodies. In 182 1, of 126 
members in the New York Constitutional Convention, 32 
were from Connecticut. A few years ago she had 15 
members in the New York legislature. In Congress one 
time, Hillhouse found that 47 members, or one fifth of 
the whole, were from this state. Calhoun once admitted 
that the members from this state, together with the gradu- 
ates of Yale, lacked only five of a majority. De Tocque- 
ville's observing eye detected this representation in 
Congress from Connecticut. At a Fourth of July cele- 
bration in Paris, where he was the only foreign guest, he 
said : " Von day I was in the House Representative ; I 
held in my hand one map of the confederation. Dere was 
one leetle yellow spot dat dey call Connect-de-coot. I 
found by the Constitution he was entitled to six of his 
boys to represent him on dat floor. But ven I make the 
acquaintance /rrj-<7;/;/r//^ with the member, I find that more 
than t'irty of the representative on that floor was born in 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 135 

Connect-de-coot. And den ven I was in de gallery of de 
house of de Senate, I find dat de Constitution permit this 
state to send two of his boys to represent him in dat 
legislature. But vonce more, ven I make the acquaint- 
ance /r;'.y<7//;/^7/^ of the senator, I find nine of the senator 
was born in Connect-de-coot. And now for my grand 
sentiment : Connect-de-coot, deleetle yellow spot dat make 
de clock-peddler, de school-master, and de senator ; de 
first give you time, de second tell you what to do with 
him, the t'ird make your law and civilization." 

In ecclesiastical matters at the west, starting after the 
first two tiers of counties on the east side of New York, 
the case is about the same. New Jersey, at the time of 
its settlement, might as well have been called New Con- 
necticut, as was the Western Reserve. As early as 1661 
colonists from Guilford, Milford, New Haven, and Brand- 
ford, having negotiated with their high mightinesses of 
New Amsterdam, had made settlements at Woodbridge, 
Newark, and Elizabeth, transferring all their ideas of 
church, town, and ministry, setting up Congregational 
churches in each town. Recently spending a Sabbath 
over there at Connecticut Farms, the ancestral home of 
my mother, I found such records as these : In their treaty 
with New Amsterdam they stipulated for " the right to 
gather a church in the Congregational way such as we 
have enjoyed in New England about twenty years past." 
Their pastors were called from New England and installed 
by councils from that quarter. Rev. James Davenport 
was in the line of pastors at Connecticut Farms. Yankee- 
like, they must have their own college, and so, at Elizabeth 
Town, under Pastor Jonathan Dickinson, was set up the 
institution which is now Princeton College. Now I see 
how natural it was for Jonathan Edwards to become presi- 



136 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

dent of that college, and how natural for Absalom Peters, 
Jeremiah Porter, and many others to go from New 
England to Princeton. Then Connecticut claims her 
score or more of college presidents out west, and many 
scores of college professors. Our " Illinois Band," which 
did so much to give character to our state, was made up 
of Connecticut men. Yale is claimed as the model of 
most of our western colleges. 

Then look at the men of mark that have gone out from 
these hills and valleys. Here were born Samuel J. Mills 
and President Humphrey, and David Brainerd and Nathan- 
iel W. Taylor, and Asahel Nettleton and Titus Coan. Then 
Guilford and her seven daughters have raised up one 
hundred ministers. Waterbury has contributed $100,000, 
has grown into seven churches and raised up thirteen 
ministers, and so on. 



LETTER XLIX. 

THE OHIO AN ANCIENT HIGHWAY. 

Huntington, W. Va., June 3, 1872. 
Steaming up the Ohio from Cincinnati I am reminded 
that it is an ancient highway of the nation. Before 
railroads or wagon-roads or bridle-paths had shot into 
the north-west territory, emigration floated down this 
stream, lodging along these beautiful bottoms and 
turning around into and up the affluents beyond. Thus 
drifted down the first colony, that of Marietta, in 178S; 
then another which rounded up into the Wabash to make 
Edwards County, in Illinois, a center of Puritan in- 
fluence ; then that band of young men from Yale,, 
bearing the precious seed-corn of Illinois College, of 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 1 37 

its supporting churches, and of not a few of our state 
institutions ; then the colony that swung up the Missis- 
sippi and the Illinois, and then tied up its fiat-boat to 
plunge off into the prairie to develop the city and college 
of Galesburg. The rivers afford the first line of settle- 
ment ; so Illinois was settled on the west side long before 
it was on the east side ; and so Iowa was first occupied 
on its east water front, and then on its west water front, 
its grand interior having been left to the explorations 
of the iron horse. So it is now along the upper Mis- 
souri, the Columbia, and all the other frontier rivers. 
It was on his way up this Ohio, eastward bound, in 
1844, that Theron Baldwin conceived the idea which 
bore such fruitage within his life, that of the College 
Society, that is now going on to bless the rising states 
of the deep interior. 

And here I am for the first time in West Virginia, 
which revives associations of the war. The Big Sandy, 
the Guyandotte, the Kanawha, are familiar names. At 
Guyandotte was raised the first rebel flag along the 
river. Out at Charleston, the capital, was fought a 
battle in that series of chasings up and down the 
Kanawha of Generals Cox and Wise. Now life is 
thumping under the ribs of this new Virginia, as north- 
ern capital and enterprise are taking hold of her resources. 
The Chesapeake and the Ohio Railroad, coming from 
the mouth of the bay across the state, over the Blue 
Ridge and the Alleghanies, to the river, is waking up 
her sleeping energies. Here in this new town on the 
river, taking the name of the president of the road, 
we have just been organizing a church which is to build 
a ten thousand dollar church edifice. 



138 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER L. 

AN EXPLORATION OF COLORADO. 

Denver, Colo., July 15, 1872. 

"First View" is the name of a station one hundred 
and fifty-nine miles east of Denver, where, in clear 
weather, the first glimpse of the mountains is secured. 
And my first view was a grand one, taking in the snowy 
range, Pike's Peak at the south and Long's Peak at the 
north. What a relief to the monotony of the plains ! 
I am just in time to take the first excursion out on 
the narrow gauge, Denver and Rio Grande, fifty miles 
to the Divide. We leave Denver at twenty-five hundred 
feet above the sea and rise up two thousand more, and 
above that I climb another thousand feet and forget my 
weariness in the exhilaration of the scene. The Q.gg 
has been set on end. The narrow gauge is a success, 
as is proved by this first one built in our country. 

Colorado is destined to become a noble state. It has 
the backbone of grandeur and wealth running through 
the middle of it. Its tumbling streams carry down 
fatness from the mountains for the valleys and the nearer 
plains on both sides of the snowy range. Its mines 
will always be a source of attraction. The ores of gold 
and silver and lead are here in abundance. Colorado 
adds her millions to the wealth of the nation. The 
miners, under a rough exterior, are a splendid set of 
men. When they washed out the pure gold in pans or 
sluices, anybody could do that. But now the process 
requires scientific skill. I saw their generosity illus- 
trated at Georgetown by the raising of a purse of i^joo 
to aid an old miner, who was becoming blind, to go 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 1 39 

east for treatment. I have to give it up that the soil 
of these valleys and plains is rich, and the bunch-grass 
on them, too. The herds of cattle every-where seen are 
fat and sleek. They even live on this grass, as cured 
hay, all winter. The milk and butter are rich. The 
beef and mutton made by grazing are sweet and juicy. 
Vegetables and small fruits grow to a fine size and 
richness. The wheat is equal to that of California. 
But all of this implies irrigation. Yet providence and 
science have made this a success. In winter the abun- 
dance of rain is stored upon the mountains in drifts of 
forty feet of snow. By the warmth of the growing 
season these snows are melted and brought down the 
canons and creeks in boiling streams, much larger than I 
had supposed. The South Platte and the Arkansas rivers, 
the Clear, the Boulder, the St. Vrain, and the Cache La 
Poudre creeks come forth from the mountains in streams 
each as large as our Illinois and Fox, and with ten times 
the current. Then in the summer, as the parched earth 
and people below seem to be mocked by the succession 
of showers that fall along the ranges almost daily, these 
are yet gathered up and sent forth with the snow floods 
for the needs of irrigation. Then the fall from the 
mountains out upon the plains is so prodigious that you 
can raise your canals and ditches so high that, to an 
unaccustomed eye, it seems all the time as though they 
were making water run up-hill. They even claim that this 
method of providence is better than that which sprinkles 
the water over the fields in showers, as it brings the 
wetting when it is needed and no more than is needed, 
saves the wages of rainy days and gives a dry harvest. 
But Moses did not quite think so, for he says : " The 
land whither thou goest, is not as the land of Egypt, 



140 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy 
foot [turning the rills with the foot] as a garden of herbs, 
but is a land that drinketh water of the rain of heaven." 
But surely these irrigated plains, stretching from Pueblo 
to Greeley, are the land of Goshen. The climate of 
dryness and of sunshine is truly delightful. My brother, 
who has been breathing this air for a dozen years, says 
that it is to the lungs as is the difference between hard 
and soft water to the hands. 

I have been upon those famous six-in-hand stage- 
coaches, and from Central City over to Georgetown, by 
special favor, on the box by the side of the driver. We 
are now at the top of the Virginia Canon. The driver 
has been whiling away his time. " Drove four years by 
the side of Hank, Mr. Greeley's famous friend. Poor 
fellow : he got to drinking and the company had to 
discharge him." But now it is three miles down to the 
bottom, where the charming Idaho Springs nestle in the 
valley. It is two thousand feet of descent. Time, 
twenty minutes. Don't cringe at those tremendous 
cracks of the whip. Do you see that steep pitch, that 
sidling place, that sharp curve around a great rock, that 
narrow road-bed ^ Do you look straight down from the 
box into the yawning gulf 1 Do you see how the steeds 
seem to share in the driver's enthusiasm .-' Surely it is a 
descensus avernus, and we are glad when we are down. 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 141 

LETTER LI. 

AMONG THE DAKOTAS. 

Santee Agency, July 25, 1872. 
Tn the year 1835 the Rev. Messrs. S. R. Riggs, T. S. 
WiUiamson, and J. D. Stevens, with their wives and their 
assistants, began work among the Indians where were to 
arise MinneapoHs, St. Paul, St. Peter, Shakopee, and Lac 
Qui Parle. In time the barbarous language was reduced 
to written and printed form ; elementary books were 
issued ; the Bible translated in part ; and hymn-books and 
works of devotion, like that of Bunyan, were produced in 
the native tongue. Schools were set up, churches were 
gathered, and the process of Christianization was well 
under way. Then in 1862 came the agony and the spasm 
of the massacre, in retaliation for culminating outrages. 
The Christian Dakotas were the means of saving the mis- 
sionaries from the fury of their heathen brethren. Into 
prison in the up country and at Davenport the devoted 
missionaries followed the arrested men, teaching them 
reading and writing, and preaching to them repentance. 
A wondrous revival ensued which led a couple of hundred 
of the savages to Christ. The entire nation having been 
removed by the government from Minnesota, these apos- 
tolic men again undertook to set up the Christianizing 
work in several of the reserves in Dakota to which the 
people had been assigned. Dr. Riggs took his station at 
Good-will in the Sisseton Reserve. Dr. Williamson took 
up his home at St. Peter for the prosecution of his work of 
translating the Bible. His son. Rev. John P. Williamson, 
took up a station at the Yankton Reservation ; and Rev. 
A. L. Riggs, a son of the other pioneer, settled upon this 



142 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Santee Reservation ; while Rev. Thos. L. Riggs, another 
son just leaving the Chicago Seminary, where his brother 
had graduated several years ago, located with another 
branch of the same tribe at Fort Sully on the Missouri, 
two hundred and forty-five miles above, three hundred and 
fifty by the water-course. 

I am delighted with my visit to this Santee Agency. It 
is thirty miles up the river from Yankton and on its south 
bank, a reserv^e of twelve by fifteen miles. Here are a 
thousand people in two hundred and fifty families, which 
are generally quartered in their own cabins on their own 
allotted land. They are making small farms. They don 
citizen's dress. They are learning to work. I find that 
they are respected by the white people on the other side 
of the river. Mr. Riggs has now a house for the mission- 
ary family and a house used both for church and school 
purposes. The church numbers two hundred and twenty- 
five members ; and the school, one hundred and eighteen 
pupils, with a night school of one hundred and thirteen 
members, and a Sunday-school of one hundred and thirty- 
six scholars. I find Mr. Riggs superintending the cutting 
and hauling of two hundred saw-logs to be sawed by the 
government mill for an out-station chapel and a girls' 
industrial school building. The Indians do the work for 
wages. That is the way that the missionary takes his vaca- 
tion in dog-days, down in the bottoms of the Missouri. 
The purpose is to build up here a grand industrial and nor- 
mal training-school for raising up native teachers afid 
preachers for the wild Indians. 

There are eight churches in the mission, five near Dr. 
Riggs, one at Flandreau, one on the Yankton Reserve, and 
one here at Santee. These have seven hundred members 
and are under seven native pastors. Three thousand have 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 143 

embraced civilized life, and ten thousand have had the 
influence of civilization brought to bear upon them. They 
have a newspaper in the Dakota, The lapi Oaye. They 
have just had their yearly meeting. Last Sunday night, 
at Yankton, I heard Rev. Joseph Ward report that meeting 
to his people, as he had been up there. He said that he 
had once thought that the only good Indian was a dead 
one, but now he thought otherwise, and he wished to do 
all he could to help that people. To reach that meeting, 
Thomas Riggs, attended by one soldier from Fort Sully and 
an Indian guide, made the three hundred and forty miles 
on pony back by the ninth hour of the fifth day, carrying 
rations and swimming the Dakota or the James river three 
times. Twice they traveled fifty miles without finding 
water for man or beast. Honored men, greatly honored, 
are these fathers and sons. 



LETTER LIL 

THE BOSTON FIRE. — DEACON PHILO CARPENTER. 

Chicago, November 18, 1872. 

Chicago to Boston in the fellowship of fire ! We know 
what it is ; we give you a genuine sympathy. The tele- 
graph has told you how quick it was. The excitement 
here was next to our own calamity. We rejoice that 
yours was not greater still. We are proud of the pluck 
and self-reliance of your people. We stand aghast 
when such buildings as yours are burned, kindled in gran- 
ite. The heart of our city was built of iron and stone and 
brick, but it had a wooden kindling on the west side. 

I have just had from Deacon Philo Carpenter an account 
of his coming to Chicago. Born at Savoy, in Berkshire 



144 



PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 



County, in 1805, educated in the common school of Adams, 
entering the Christian life under Dr. Beman at Troy, N. 
Y., where he had learned the drug business, impelled by 
the spirit of that revival to go west and do good, and learn- 
ing from a western rover of the little town of Chicago, in 
the summer of 1832 he pushed through the canal and the 
lakes to Detroit ; thence by mail-wagon to Niles ; thence, 
as the mail went on to Chicago, one hundred miles on 
pony back, down the Saint Joseph on a flat-boat to the town 
of that name at its mouth; thence (as the little sail-boat 
that ran over the lakes did not dare go, on account of the 
cholera prevailing at Chicago) around the head of the lake 
in a canoe towed with a rope of elm bark by a couple of 
Indians. Coming to the mouth of the Calumet, the 
Indians did not wish to go farther, fearing the pestilence ; 
but, persuaded to go on, they came to a peremptory halt 
when they reached the place of Mr. Ellis, which was four 
miles outside of town, within sight of the flag of Fort 
Dearborn. But this settler, Mr. Ellis, being himself a man 
from Berkshire, in his own ox-wagon brought the new- 
comer on to Chicago. It was now August. He found a 
village of a couple of hundred of whites and half-breeds, and 
a few companies in the fort, which kept its trench open 
for burial of cholera-stricken soldiers. In a batch brought 
out for interment he saw one who came to life just as he 
was about to be laid in, and so one more was saved for ser- 
vice, when all were needed, for General Scott was here 
directing the Black Hawk War. On the night of his 
arrival he happened into the first prayer-meeting of Chi- 
cago, a Methodist brother andamilitary officer joining him. 
On the next Sunday he started the first Sunday-school of 
the place, and this was kept up to become the Sunday- 
school of the First Presbyterian Church, which was gath- 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 1 45 

ered the next year (1833) by Rev. Jeremiah Porter. Dur- 
ing that intervening winter a pubHc service was main- 
tained by reading sermons, and he, the first druggist of 
Chicago, was the reader. He wrote and circulated the 
first total abstinence pledge in the community.^ 



LETTER LIIL 

AT THE HEAD OF LAKE SUPERIOR. BISMARCK. 

DuLUTH, Minn., October 6, 1873. 
Seventeen years ago, i8$6, I came up by the steamer 
Lady Elgin from Chicago to Superior City in company 
with her proprietor, Gordon S. Hubbard, William Bross, 
of The Tribune, and Rev. George W. Perkins, for a 
summer vacation. Taking a tug at that baby city, we 
came up the bay and had a picnic on some of these 
heights, not dreaming that here was to come up a rival 
to that ambitious point that shivered on the brink between 
the lake and the tamarack swamp. We then longed for 
a public conveyance to Saint Paul, that we might go back 
by way of the Mississippi, and were tempted to try the 
trail. But coming this time from the meeting of the 
American Board at Minneapolis, over the railroad through 

1 While I have been copying this letter (August 14, 1886) Deacon Carpenter's 
remains are awaiting interment. " A good man and a just." " And he died in a 
good old age, full of days, riches, and honor." He had pioneered and maintained 
the reforms of temperance, anti-slavery, and of opposition to secret, oath-bound 
societies, giving to the latter, including a business house and donations to Wheaton 
College, as much as fifty thousand dollars. He has been one of the founders of 
the Chicago Theological Seminary, giving it more than fifty thousand dollars. For 
many years he was a member of the Chicago Board of Education, of which he was 
a part of the time vice-president. He had years ago deeded to our three mission- 
ary societies three stone-front houses, which now become available. His will, 
besides providing for legacies to the amoimt of $30,000, makes the Chicago Semi- 
nary the residuary legatee, and this will probably bring in $75,000 more. 



146 PILGRTAPS LETTERS. 

the dense swamps and rough uplands, I was content with 
having waited for the wagon. 

Duluth is finely situated upon an acclivity that runs 
back a mile, sloping sunnily toward the south, fronting 
the bay and looking down the lake. The Minnesota 
Point, cut through, furnishes a passage-way to the finest 
kind of a harbor. Back are the Dalles of the St. Louis 
River, with its series of cataracts for mill-power, and the 
railroad following the stream to find its way through and 
to afford transportation facilities. The Northern Pacific, 
having its terminus here, must soon find a rail communica- 
tion around the head of the lake and so on to the east. 
At the head of Lake Superior navigation, Duluth must 
become a second Chicago. 

I have just been over the road to Bismarck. What of 
the country .-• Out to Brainerd on the Mississippi, one 
hundred and fifteen miles, it is a tamarack swamp, dreary 
enough. And yet here are the wood and timber for 
lumber to supply the prairies beyond. For sixty miles 
on the other side of the river it is indifferent. Then you 
come for seventy-five miles to beautiful farming country, 
with undulating prairie, grove, and lake in delightful 
interspersion. Then comes the flat forty-mile-wide valley 
of the Red River of the north. Then from the Red it 
is two hundred miles of high rolling prairie until you 
come to the Missouri, where now the steamers take their 
start with garrison and commercial freight for the many 
hundreds of miles up to F'ort Benton. Opposite Bismarck 
I visit Fort Abraham Lincoln and find General Custer 
just in with his army from a campaign of chastising the 
Indians. I was much drawn to the general for his gentle 
and modest way. From Bismarck I wish to reach south- 
ern Dakota, to attend its association at Vermillion on 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 1 47 

the Missouri. It is nine hundred miles down the river 
by its course, and the boats are uncertain and slow. And 
so back I go, by way of Duluth, Saint Paul, and Sioux 
City, to meet the brethren of the new territory. While up 
in this country I learn of the slanderous black-mailing 
charge against the Indian commissioner. Rev. E. P. Smith, 
for official service while Indian agent at Leach Lake. 
He had prevented the ring men from swindling the 
Indians in a lumber deal ; and this is the way they treat 
every official that stands between them and the objects 
of their rapacity. I fear that these white savages will 
weary the life out of him. 



LETTER LIV. 

THE LONE STAR STATE. 

Dallas, Texas, April 14, 1874. 
"Go to Texas." As this was not an execration, but an 
official injunction, I cheerfully obeyed. And here I am. 
Across Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian Territory ; 
over the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the 
Red ; across this stretch of territory from the heart of the 
interior, one passes to reach the border of a state which 
yet stretches on to the gulf, with an area equal to 
four times that of New England. Crossing the territory 
for two hundred and fifty miles, the passengers had to 
come, as it were, in bond, for no white people are allowed 
to settle there. All along the railway, in spots, the 
Indians' settlements were to be seen ; the Indians them- 
selves clad in citizen's dress, in cabin homes ; their farms 
fenced ; their fields under the plow held by red hands 
and drawn by horses or mules. Their homes and farms 



148 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

looked less unthrifty than do most of those in our Egypt 
of Illinois. At one station they had shipped twenty car- 
loads of cattle and as many of hogs since the opening of 
the road. At two or three stations I saw bales of cotton 
awaiting shipment. Just now the Cherokee superintendent 
of schools reports twenty-three hundred children in attend- 
ance, with the schools running nine months in the year, 
with twenty-two white teachers and forty native. They 
have also a ladies' high school, taught by a Mount Hol- 
yoke teacher. The annual cost to the government, as for 
the thirty years past, is $35,000. 

Texas, like Kansas, is a state with a history. She 
gained her independence from Mexico in 1836. Her 
defence of the Fortress of Alamo in San Antonio, where 
Davy Crockett and Bowie and Travis lost their lives, and 
not a man remained to tell the story, was her Thermopylae ; 
and her final battle of San Jacinto was one of those which 
determine nationalities. Her annexation to the United 
States, in the interests of slavery, was after another battle, 
one of moral forces, and her complications with Mexico 
brought on another war. But as a result, by the over- 
ruling of providence, that vast region of California, Ari- 
zona, New Mexico, and Texas was transferred from 
Romish to Protestant control, and then at last consecrated 
to freedom. 

I am delighted to find the provision made by Texas for 
public schools. Coming in as a sovereign state, possessing 
her own vast domain, she makes a yet more liberal appro- 
priation for this purpose than does the United States in 
the territories. She set apart four leagues of land, 17,712 
acres, for each county, and in making land grants to new 
railroads she gave the alternate section to the same fund. 
For a state university she set aside fifty leagues, 221,400 



FROM THE FIRE TO THE CENTENNIAL. 1 49 

acres. In all she has thus devoted three million acres. 
Then of the $10,000,000 for which she sold New Mexico 
to the United States, she put $2,000,000 into her school 
fund. I once asked a Texas editor how it came that 
Texas had gone so far ahead of the other slave-holding 
states in making provision for education. 

"Why, don't you know that Mr. Austin, one of the 
founders of the republic, was a New England man, and 
that most of his settlers were from the north } " 

Yet in Texas, of persons over ten years of age, 70,895 
whites and 150,617 blacks, one fourth of the population 
can neither read nor write ! We have just organized 
churches at Paris and Sherm.an and have prospected for 
one in this rising city of Dallas. 



LETTER LV. 

NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 

Grand Traverse Bay, January 15, 1875. 
Sixteen years ago, 1858, I took my vacation at this old 
mission. A sermon which I had just touched off in my 
Plymouth pulpit, upon the occasion of the sputtering 
of the original Atlantic cable, was fired again on the 
next Sabbath up here in the woods, we all being uncon- 
scious of what the outside world knew, that the first 
oceanic telegraph was a failure. But then it was quite 
the thing to be behind the times up here, for the excellent 
old Presbyterian Indian missionary was brisk in arguing 
with me that the Creator had made the fossils of the 
globe and had put them in sittt for his own glory, and 
because the mail came only once a week upon an Indian's 
back through one hundred miles of forest. In all that 



I50 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



north-west wildwoods I found only a single circuit-rider 
and two Indian mission churches, that at Northfield, under 
the American Missionary Association, and this one under 
the Presbyterian Board. In a year or so Superintendent 
Read coasted along this region and made a newspaper 
report, which seemed as romantic as though it were 
an account of an exploration of some part of the coast of 
South America. Then off he posted to Oberlin to get 
missionaries for the newly discovered field. LeRoy 
Warren, an ex-soldier, and Mr. Crum were found heroic 
enough for the undertaking ; and now in these last six 
years the forty churches of his district have increased 
to sixty-seven, with two new conferences added. Provi- 
dence seems to have preserved these woods of pine 
and beech and maple from the slashing of the early 
settler's axe as a grand timber lot for the prairies beyond. 
If they had come in here as they did into Ohio, their 
log-heap fires would have been far more destructive than 
these forest conflagrations have been. As it is now, 
you find Michigan lumber all over Illinois, Kansas, Colo- 
rado, and Texas. 



PERIOD VII. 

AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. 
The Centennial. — The Gilded Dead-fall. — Transfer South. 



LETTER LVI. 

AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. — THE CENTENNIAL. THE 

GILDED DEAD-FALL. TRANSFER SOUTH. 

It was a gladsome time that was in anticipation, a vaca- 
tion of two months at the Centennial Exposition and on 
the sea-coast. But on the way the gilded dead-fall of the 
sleeping-berth came down on the top of my head. It pro- 
duced congestion of the brain. After a week at Phila- 
delphia under medical care, I was transferred to Clifton 
Springs. Here for a year and a half I submitted myself 
to the round of ordinances in that sanitarium. For much 
of the time my head felt as though it were in a crown of 
iron and this was tightening down upon it, while the peo- 
ple, as I dragged myself from one shade in the ample 
grounds to another, looked on me with a pitying eye, as if 
to say, " Poor doomed man ! " But my thought was all the 
time : " I shall not die but live and declare the works of 
the Lord." 

Advanced in convalescence I was advised by physicians 
for still farther benefit to make a transfer to the south ; 
with this advice fell in the appointment as field superin- 



152 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

tendent of the American Missionary Association at the 
south. 

As I am about to be shifted from the right to the left 
wing of our corps of the grand Home Missionary army, let 
me cast an admiring glance along and back over the his- 
tory of its "march to the sea." At headquarters, men of 
wisdom and tenacity ; along the line, comrades with 
absorbing devotion to the common cause. How this corps 
did sweep out over the AUeghanies. down into and across 
the valley ! How, as it struck the barrier of the Rockies, it 
flanked that continental range, by way of the Isthmus and 
Cape Horn, and surprised the golden coast by a relentless 
occupation ! A total exchequer of more than eight mill- 
ions ; a band of leaders kept mustered full from year to 
year a thousand men ; thirty-five hundred spiritual garrisons 
set up and kept fully manned, — these are but slight indi- 
cations of the grand campaign. And now all along the 
front there is the solid tread of marching men. And out 
beyond are the steady pickets and the restless scouts. 
How slight the fatality at headquarters for these more 
than half a hundred years ! — Absalom Peters, Charles Hall, 
and Milton Badger, — their names a treasure in the land, 
a rally-cry to many a veteran on the field ; and now the 
three men at the same place, Coe, Clapp, and Storrs, how 
enduring ! On the staff we revere the memory of Kirby 
and Baldwin, and Kent and Clary, and Guernsey and Mer- 
rill. In parting, I must say that in these sixteen and a 
half years of communication with the secretaries, superin- 
tendents, and missionaries of the American Home Mis- 
sionary Society, not one word has occurred to jar our 
personal friendship. But in this transfer it is a comfort 
to consider that it is all one cause after all ; that on the 
left wing there is a dauntless courage of self-sacrifice ; 



AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. I53 

that its course has been one of startling providential 
development ; and that the terminus of both lines is the 
same. Indeed, I remind myself that this change is but a 
coming back to my original status, from which I went 
over to the right wing. 

I am moved with affectionate regret upon leaving official 
relations to Secretaries D. B. Coe, A. H. Clapp, and H. 
M. Storrs. As the courts accumulate the wisdom of pre- 
cedents and of experience, so do these representatives of 
their sphere of service. And does n't the breadth of their 
operations set out their natures into broader manhood, into 
richer fellow-feeling .-' Take this specimen from a letter I 
received from Dr. Clapp while I was shut up at Clifton 
Springs: "Did you ever see the old lion up to Central 
Park pacing his cage all day with only a lion's restlessness, 
looking never at the crowd around him, but sending that 
far-away gaze off through his prison bars, evidently think- 
ing of the deserts and jungles where he used to roam at 
his own wild will } Something makes me think of that 
lion whenever I think of you. I don't believe any harder 
work could be found for you than to be shut up in that 
cage of enforced idleness. You try to make us think 
that you 've got so tamed and humbled that you take it 
patiently. And I '11 believe all of it that I can and pray 
that you may really * attain ' to it. 

" You '11 say : ' Oh, yes, brother Clapp can preach 
patience and all that, but just put him in my place and 
see how he 'd bear it ! ' I 'd bear it like the gentle, sub- 
missive saint ! You 've no idea of the prodigious capacity 
I have for laziness — if I could only get a chance ! I don't 
want to have a chance, though, by having my few brains 
banged out through a darkey's carelessness. And now, 
my dear old fellow, when you get well, 'r' you going to do 



154 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

any better ? That 's the question. Are you going to set 
up your jammed head again against all the laws of nature ? 
I know just how humbly you 'd talk if I were to ask you 
the question in person ; but what I want to know is, what 
are you going to do about it? Just the same as before? 
If you do, I '11 hire a darkey as is a darkey to 'let suthin' 
drap ' onto your head that '11 fix it next time once for all! 
Do you hear that ? And will you take warning ? Doctors 
Coe and Storrs would send 'bushels of love' and good 
wishes of love if they were at hand just now." 

When Dr. Clapp had his own pull-down a few years ago 
and I sent on this original letter to his wife, proposing that 
she get him to take his own medicine, he answered after a 
little : " Take warning from me and don't be so lazy ; you 
see what it leads to." And didn't he go right off again 
to doing the work of two or three men ? But then 
he seems to keep himself familiar with both sides of 
the equator of life. When I told him once that I had 
failed to reach a certain missionary by mail, he asked, 
" Where did you direct it ? " To Oberlin. " Why, did n't 
you know that he had gone to heaven ? " No, I did n't. 
" He has, but then he '11 get it all the same, for that is the 
nearest post-office." The first time that I ever saw him 
was in 1853 at the Presbyterian General Assembly in 
Washington, where the sprightly, raven-haired representa- 
tive from the General Convention of Vermont tickled the 
sides of the grave and reverend commissioners by remind- 
ng them that the exports of his state were men and 
women. And now a western editor calls him " that grizzly 
old soldier of the cross." 

I am often inquired of how I came out in the legal case. 
The jury in the United States District Court at Chicago 
rendered a verdict of $10,000. The Pennsylvania com- 



AN INTERVAL OF SILENCE. 



155 



pany appealed to the United States Supreme Court. 
After four years more this case was reached and the deci- 
sion of the court below affirmed, that it was the railway and 
not the Pullman company that was responsible ; but upon 
a technicality it was remanded for a new trial. The 
Supreme Court said : " There was an error committed on 
the trial, to which exception was duly taken, but which 
does not seem to have been remedied by any portion of 
the charge appearing in the bill of exceptions. The plain- 
tiff was permitted, against the objection of the defendant, 
to give the number and ages of his children — a son ten 
years old, and three daughters of the ages respectively of 
fourteen, seventeen, and twenty-one. . . . For this error 
alone the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded for 
a new trial. It is so ordered." My attorneys, in their argu- 
ment, made no allusion to this testimony, and the error, if it 
were one, they thought had been cured in another part of 
the charge of the judge. As it would take four or five years 
to go through the process again, I was willing to consider 
the proposition of the company for a compromise. I said, 
Give me the principal, ^10,000, without the interest, which 
would now be $2,000 more. We agreed upon $9,000. 
The necessary medical, traveling, and legal expense had 
amounted to $6,000. A prominent member of the jury, 
A. M. Poole, Esq., of Henry, Illinois, writes me : " All 
sympathy for you or your family was carefully and ruth- 
lessly excluded from the computation by the jury and the 
case decided quid pro quo on a strict dollar and cent basis, 
the same as though you had been a bachelor with no kith 
nor kin dependent upon you." 



PERIOD VIII. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1878-79. 

Atlanta. — Emancipation Day. — Talladega, Ala. — Chattanooga. — 
Mardi Gras and Washington's Birthday in New Orleans. — The 
Acadians in Louisiana. — San Antonio. — Corpus Christi. — Alabama 
Anniversary Week. — Hampton, Va. — Fisk University. 



LETTER LVII. 

ATLANTA AS A PLACE OF BUSINESS, OF EDUCATION, 
OF HEALTH. 

Atlanta, Ga., November i, 1878. 
From the " Garden City" to the "Gate City," which is 
the "Chicago of the south." The one set on fire by the 
lamp of a cow-shed, and the other, by the torch of war ; both 
re-built by the same magic. This city, upon the foot-hills 
of the Appalachian range, is eleven hundred feet above 
the ocean, while the other is only six hundred. Kenesaw, 
with its association of " Hold the fort," the Stone Moun- 
tain, and the Lost Mountain are in full view. This eleva- 
tion gives to the softness of the southern air the tonic of 
a more rtorthern latitude. The city is healthy, and has 
never had an indigenous case of yellow fever. As we were 
removing to this city from Chicago, it was deemed advisa- 
ble to avoid exposure to that epidemic at Chattanooga, and 
so came around by way of Washington. When the sol- 
diers before the scourge had been transferred from New 
Orleans to Chattanooga and thence to this city, their bag- 

156 



IN THE SOUTH. 



157 



gage was left a whole day at the " car-shed " in the very- 
center of the town, as if to do the best possible to import 
the plague. But it did not come. This being above the 
yellow fever line gives Atlanta the great advantage for 
manufacturing and for jobbing in a southern city. A 
pastor here, with a church of four hundred members, tells 
me that within his congregation he does not have more 
than two funerals a year ; and that at one time he went 
for eighteen months without the death of a child in his 
parish. Atlanta has more northern people and capital and 
business houses than any other city in the south. It is 
fast making itself a center in the wholesale business. It 
is coming up in the line of manufactures, cotton mills, and 
such like. It has street railways running in all directions. 
It is lighted with gas and is supplied with hydrant water. 
The population is called thirty-five thousand.^ After the 
war the capital was removed from Milledgeville to this 
city. Our legislature presents a wide-awake yet dignified 
appearance in both Houses. With the members all in one 
party it might seem difficult to get up the enthusiasm of 
debate ; but on all questions, aside from the one of the 
solid south, they divide off, as is the nature of man to do, 
and go into discussion with a regular southern vim. In 
respect to Sabbath observance there abides in this section 
a good degree of virtuous conservatism. We have here 
three Presbyterian, churches, three southern Methodist and 
two northern ; of the last, one for colored and one for 
white people. The northern Methodists have here the 
Clark University for colored students. This is also the 
Episcopal See of Bishop Haven. He has given me a 
royal welcome. 

I find the work of the American Missionary Association 

1 It is fifty thousand now (August, 1886). 



158 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

here in good condition. The Atlanta University runs 
with about three hundred students, one half of whom 
are boarded in the institution. The site, which from its 
command of the city had been covered with confederate 
earth-works, is fine indeed, with the mountains in full view. 
What sort of men and women do I find in charge .'' Why, 
the president and two of his associates are graduates of 
Yale, one of Dartmouth, one of Harvard, and one of 
Lawrence University; while the other teachers, seven or 
eight ladies, are of personal and literary cultivation to 
match. These instructors are doing first-class work. The 
legislature, in recognition of the right of the colored peo- 
ple to a share of the fund for agricultural colleges, appro- 
priates from year to year $8,000 to this institution, which 
thus serves as a state normal for the freedmen. The 
Storrs School, in the heart of the city, with six lady 
teachers, has each year about four hundred pupils. Hard 
by is the First Congregational Church with over one hun- 
dred and fifty members and a Sunday-school of over two 
hundred and fifty. Theirs is one of the most beautiful 
church edifices in the city. Built of brick, with a slate 
roof, with a tower and a bell in it, and with stained glass 
windows, it cost $5,200. All the work upon the building 
was done by colored men. Thanksgiving will be observed 
there and in the union church of the university. At the 
McPherson barracks, within the city limits, four compa- 
nies entertain themselves with the drill and routine of 
camp life. Their morning and evening salutes and the 
floating flag are grateful symbols of our national union. 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 59 

LETTER LVIIL 

EMANCIPATION DAY. 

Atlanta, Ga., January 2, 1879. 
The salutation of a " Happy New Year " to these ex- 
bondmen takes on a new element of gladness every year 
as they celebrate Abraham Lincoln's edict of freedom. 
For ten years they have observed the day in the First 
Congregational Church. This time they thought to give 
the occasion more scope, and so, as citizens, they sought 
and obtained the use of their capitol. And there these 
dusky Americans gathered, with Jefferson and Franklin 
and Andrew Jackson and several other Georgia worthies 
looking down upon them from the walls. The chairman, 
a former student of these schools and now one of Uncle 
Sam's letter-carriers in this city, opens the service by a 
dignified and sententious address. The orator of the 
day is Richard R. Wright, principal of the high school 
at Cuthbert, Ga. His first speech was that one made to 
General Howard in the Storrs School, "Tell them that 
we are rising, sir," — a speech that was honored by a poem 
of Whittier. After a tribute to the character and the 
work of the great emancipator, he went on to show some 
of the results of emancipation in the acquiring of educa- 
tion and of property. It was an eloquent address from 
one who could tell how sixteen years ago he was brought 
to this same city with his mother and put upon the 
auction block, and how he could yet hear the cry : " What 
do I hear for this nigger gal and boy ? " 



l60 PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 

LETTER LIX. 

TALLADEGA COLLEGE. 

Talladega, Ala., January lo, 1879. 
Beautiful for situation. As the mountains are round 
about Jerusalem. Here upon these mountain slopes I have 
seen for the first time the sunset tints of orange, rose, and 
pink, deepening into purple and blue. The tonic and the 
softness of this climate make it delightful. The main 
building of the college, upon an ample campus, is that of 
an ante-bellum Baptist institution which was purchased 
by the Freedmen's Bureau after the war. A planter who 
had subscribed nine hundred dollars toward the erection 
of that building sent Ambrose Headen and other slaves 
to work it out as carpenters. Headen says that then he 
thought it hard so to work to educate his master's chil- 
dren while his own could have no chance. He is now a 
trustee of the college and his four children have been 
educated there, one as a minister and the others as 
teachers. A fellow-servant who had helped to make the 
brick for that old college is now a deacon of the new 
church in it ; he has come to possess the plantation of his 
old master, to whom in genuine kindness he administers 
charity ; and he is now himself a contractor for making 
brick and laying it up in the wall. During the war this 
building was used for a prison for federal soldiers, and 
so upon one of the panes of glass has since been found 
the etching, "Union prisoners." This institution mag- 
nifies the normal, theological, and the industrial lines of 
education. Prof. G. W. Andrews is doing a grand work 
in training young men for the ministry. The Winsted 
Farm, bought by friends in Winsted, Conn., is used for 



IN THE SOUTH. l6l 

teaching the better methods of agriculture. The first 
agricultural fair ever gotten up by the colored people of 
this country was held upon this college campus for four 
days of last November. It was a grand success. It 
drew together three thousand people, many of them 
white. The show of animals was fine. Instead of the 
white folks' horse-racing there were matches for spelling, 
speaking, and band playing, with prizes rendered. It 
had a surplus of one hundred and forty-three dollars. 
It was opened with prayer and closed with the doxology 
by a spontaneous outburst. Then the colored men 
straightened themselves up in conscious dignity. 

The Shelby Iron Works are forty miles below. Its 
company is made up of northern and southern men. 
It runs two furnaces. It has put up a large two-story 
building for church and school purposes among their 
colored operatives. Its officers say that the school has 
increased the value of labor ten cents a day. This is 
only one of fifteen such furnaces as have been set up in 
northern Alabama since the war, largely with northern 
capital and northern brains. 



LETTER LX. 

ALL YE ARE BRETHREN. 

Chattanooga, Tenn., January i8, 1879. 
This strategic city, which was so severely assaulted last 
fall by the yellow fever, is now the master of the situation. 
Its river, the Tennessee, is booming with a rise of thirty- 
eight feet. I note a wonderful progress since I was here 
thirteen years ago. Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, 
and Chickamausfa will tell their historic tale to future gen- 



I 62 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

erations. The National Cemetery here will ever have its 
story to relate. This is the center of an immense iron 
interest, and the city must become one of the most 
important in the south. I meet here the Central South 
Association, four of whose churches are those of white 
people. About half of the ministerial members of the 
five southern associations are white men, and all churches 
are open to Christians, irrespective of color. And so 
these bodies are illustrating the Saviour's words : " All 
ye are brethren." 



LETTER LXI. 

THE SCHOOLS. 

Memphis, Tenn., January 20, 1879. 
The Mississippi, which has for a long time been block- 
ading navigation by floating ice, is again clear. A good 
business was done in capturing the ice as it was hastening 
on to a more southern market. The dreadful effects of 
the yellow fever last fall are yet felt in many ways. But 
this is a noble city, well built, and commanding an 
extensive trade. By the census of 1870 it numbered 
47,226; by the epidemic the population has been greatly 
reduced, but Memphis is bound to come up. Her new 
system of water-works and sewerage will be a protection 
in the future. The city has a fine public school system 
which gives the colored schools teachers of qualification 
and pay equal to those of the white schools. The Le 
Moyne Institute, with its Teachers' Home and an endow- 
ment of eleven thousand dollars, named for its founder. 
Dr. LeMoyne, of Pennsylvania, serves the purpose of a 
high school and normal school for the freed youth. Prof. 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 63 

A. J. Steele, the principal, is training his girls in nursing 
and sewing, and intends to introduce cooking. He is 
also looking toward mechanical industries for boys. 



LETTER LXII. 

mardi gras. state sunday-school association. 

Washington's birthday. 

New Orleans, February 25, 1879. 

Mardi Gras ("fat Tuesday"), the last day before 
Lent. No other people on the continent but these 
Franco-Americans could originate and keep up such a 
carnival. But here the spirit of it pervades the entire 
community. From a gallery I had a view of the whole 
pageant, "the history of the world" from the garden of 
Eden down to seventy-six, exhibited upon twenty-foUr 
cars, each one drawn by four or six horses. So much 
cost, and all just for the fun of the thing ! Last night 
at the carnival dinner, given at the Saint Charles, General 
W. T. Sherman, being present, was made the Duke of 
Louisiana, in honor of his former citizenship in this state, 
having been, up to the war, a teacher at the military acad- 
emy at Alexandria. Addressing him, the Lord High Cham- 
berlain said : " We have all worn the gray, but it gives us 
the greatest pleasure to welcome you. We feel honored 
in paying honor to a soldier whose deeds have cast luster 
upon the military annals of the republic." 

I fall in here also with the State Sunday-school con- 
vention. Aside from the essential merit of this move- 
ment, it is a grand process for promoting good feeling 
between the north and the south. Here is a common 
basis of union. Messrs. Peltz, of The Sunday-School 



164 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Times, Ralph Wells, of New York, and E. Payson Porter 
and B. F. Jacobs, of Chicago, by invitation, are present 
to aid in launching the new enterprise. They are each 
upon the platform three times with their set speeches, 
which are intensely practical in detail and fervid in 
delivery. Dr. B. M. Palmer, in his words of welcome, 
took down all the bars to cooperation in this work, and 
praised Mr. Moody for his line of service. Bishop Keener 
made an address on the claims of the Sunday-school upon 
Christians. 

Rev. Dr. W. S. Alexander, the president of Straight 
University and pastor of our Central Church, who is a 
member of the executive committee of the city Sunday- 
school Association, was officially prominent in the con- 
vention. He and two colored pastors were made officers 
of the state body. By resolution, there was an earnest 
call for sympathy, prayer, and endeavor in behalf of the 
colored people. A colored delegate made a speech. 
Several colored schools were represented on the floor. 
Mr. W. R. Lyman, upon taking the chair of the body, 
turned to the colored delegation and said : " As a repre- 
sentative of the southern churches, I say that we intend 
to reach out our hand to your people and to do all we 
can for you. Your children must be trained for Christ." 
Mr. Lyman, in his paper on the religious history of the 
state, said that in the Natchez country, during the 
Spanish occupation, there was a law against the holding 
of Protestant religious worship and against the circulating 
and the reading of the Bible of the Protestants, and that 
the law was enforced. 

The military display on Washington's birthday was the 
most brilliant of any I ever saw. The streets were full 
of loyal bunting, and the Stars and Stripes were carried 



IN THE SOUTH. 165 

by every battalion. The Union soldiers stationed here 
were in the lead of the militia. General Sherman, arriving 
later, was received by a committee of the Grand Army 
of the Republic. 



LETTER LXIII. 

THE ACADIANS. SUGAR MAKING. REVEREND 

DANIEL CLAY. 

New Iberia, La., March i, 1879. 
This is the region where settled the refugees from 
Nova Scotia, the Acadians. More than half of the white 
people of the town are their descendants, wonderfully 
mixed with American, Spanish, and African blood. Refus- 
ing to take the oath of allegiance to England, they natu- 
rally sought a French and Catholic province ; but it was 
not long before this Louisiana was acquired by the Protest- 
ant, English-speaking republic which has also of late 
required of them the oath of allegiance. The black peo- 
ple say that the " 'Cajans " were cruel with them. Surely 
the story of Evangeline was no mere romance. Louisiana 
ought to be loyal to the states of the Mississippi valley, 
for they have furnished her with land. Down here that 
mighty river in its geologic history has had to shift its 
course so as to dump its loads of mud for the forming of 
this delta, just as the coal-heaver changes the track of his 
wheel-barrow in unloading his cargo. Brother S. S. Ash- 
ley says that this part of the country was settled a thou- 
sand years before the Creator had gotten it ready. Yet it 
is the sugar-bush for North America. This deep, rich 
alluvium and the long hot summer make the sugar-cane. 
But the belt that is good for this culture is quite narrow, 



I 66 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

SO that the best sugar-lands sell for forty or fifty dollars an 
acre. Coming up the Bayou Teche, the seventy-two miles 
to this town from Morgan City, I gained some idea of the 
extent of this business. For sixty miles the banks are 
lined with sugar plantations that reach back one or two 
miles to the irreclaimable swamp. About every half-mile 
you pass the sugar-mill with its village of negro shanties 
back of the mansion. Each plantation has a landing, and 
so we zigzag all the way up, putting off freight or the pil- 
grims returning from the Mardi Gras. These great plan- 
tations are changing hands a good deal. Many of the old 
planters are reduced to poverty. Northern men are buy- 
ing up the premises. Here are half a dozen from Chicago. 
They are plowing deep and fertilizing. They get great 
crops. The tendency now, under free labor, is to break 
up the great plantations. Instead of every man having 
his mill, many will raise the cane and sell it to the sugar- 
maker. It is not profitable to manufacture on a small 
scale. The adulteration of the northern refiners is lead- 
ing to the process of refining in making the sugar here. 
Last year nine refineries were put in here on the bayou at 
an immense expense. The old style makes the sugar in 
open kettles ; the new boils the juice in vacuo and carries 
on the bleaching process before the sugar comes. This 
process avoids the using of chemicals to change the filthy 
brown into white. These plantations make, per year, from 
four to nine hundred hogsheads of twelve hundred pounds 
each. Two New Yorkers last year made fourteen hundred 
hogsheads. I am interested in the planting. The seed 
cane is preserved during the winter in piles covered with 
litter and dirt as we cover grape-vines. When planted, it 
is laid in trenches, two stalks together, in a continuous 
row, so that it is plowed only one way. One planting lasts 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 67 

three and four years, the old roots sprouting up in the 
spring. It is a tender growth. It is easily killed by the 
overflow of the water. It may be frosted. It may sour. 
Hence the rush and the drive of the sugar season. Night 
and day and Sundays the mills had to run in the old time, 
and the hands were allowed five hours for sleep. Now 
it takes one man to do the work of three under the old 
regime. 

At Terre Bonne I enjoyed the hospitality of Rev. Daniel 
Clay, who is the pastor of the church there and the bishop 
of three others. He had given the land for the church site 
and had built the house, about 30x50, which was ceiled 
not with cedar but with yellow pine. He had built a plain 
parsonage. No aid from abroad. He is a man of decided 
influence and of universal respect. During the yellow fever 
plague he gathered up from his poor people ten barrels of 
corn-meal, two hogs, chickens, eggs, geese, and twenty- 
three dollars in cash, and carried it all to Thibodeaux, 
the parish seat of Terre Bonne. Nearing the dead-line, 
on which stood an armed guard, he unloaded his stuff just 
outside that line. He then retreated and the guard rolled 
it inside. The town committee then came and took off 
the spoil. No breath from the townsmen must touch the 
guard, and his, in turn, must not touch the benefactors. 
Once when Henry Clay, during a presidential campaign, 
came through this region speaking upon the stump, the 
slave who was put on the stage to turn the water was this 
one. It was only with his native eloquence and his per- 
sonal experience that Daniel Clay could say to his people, 
as he did say after my sermon that had referred to the old 
times : " Yes, indeed, I cried, ' O Lord, how long, how 
long ! ' and the Lord said to me, ' Daniel, it won't be long ; 
you shall yet sit under your own vine and fig-tree.' I be- 



l68 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

lieved it, I expected it." And now he does sit under his own 
vine and fig-tree. He is cultivating two hundred and fifty 
acres of the old plantation where he had served as a slave, 
and owns ten, for which he paid forty dollars an acre, 
and is working his own four mules and three horses. The 
four adjoining plantations of the family of his mistress 
have all gone into financial ruin. His wife is a French 
African Creole, the mother of his fourteen children, ten of 
whom survive to live about him, a family of rare respecta- 
bility. His son Henry, who died at the age of twenty-one, 
was an eloquent man. Now, why might not the Lord say 
to this prophet in captivity, " Daniel, it won't be long," as 
he also said to the prophet of the Babylonian exile : " O 
Daniel, greatly beloved, the Lord will accomplish seventy 
years in the desolation of Jerusalem ! " I saw the 
legal document by which the church was incorporated. 
In it Mr. Clay is recognized as its bishop, and three or 
four brethren as preachers. How did he ever come across 
that New Testament idea of elderships, a presbytery, and 
a bishop in a local church } It has been a surprise to me 
to find that his church and nearly all those of like faith in 
the south were set up on Roy's Manual. But Royville, a 
few miles from New Iberia, was not. It is a French 
Catholic town. 



LETTER LXIV. 

SAN ANTONIO AND THE TRIP TO "CORPUS." 

Corpus Christi, Texas, March 22, 1879. 
My course to this city was by way of Galveston, Hous- 
ton, and San Antonio. This last is the ancient seat of 
Spanish Romanism, with its antique mission fortifications 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 69 

yet standing in their frowning strength. Its early pre- 
emption secures two thirds of the present population, 
twenty-one thousand, to the Romanists, who have three 
massive stone cathedrals, — one for the Germans, one for 
the Spanish, and one for the Americans, — and who have 
their nunnery and their Jesuit college, which are patron- 
ized not a little by American families. From San Antonio 
to this city it is two hundred miles by a zigzag line over- 
land. On the way two churches are to be visited and 
appointments filled at the county seats, Helena and Goliad. 
The hack will take us fifty miles to the ranch of Hart, 
who has engaged to set passengers over to Helena twenty 
miles. Soon we find that one of the wheels of the new 
Concord coach is giving out. Then it is thirty-five miles 
in a Mexican lumber wagon. On retiring at Hart's, he 
warns us of fleas. He can not go over to Helena. He 
strikes out two and a half miles to find a conveyance, and 
fails. Another ranchman, coming along, thinks that 
Jones, eight miles away, will go. So over he drives. 
Jones can go, but his horses can not. Brown says, " Go on 
with my team." It is twenty miles. No dinner. At dark 
we arrive in Helena, with ponies tuckered out. But lo ! 
the church is three and a half miles in the country, so we 
tie up at the tavern. In the morning we reach our colony 
of colored people. Mine host is a farmer with one hun- 
dred acres paid for and under cultivation in cotton and 
corn, with cattle and horses about him. His table fare is 
plain. He keeps up family worship. His oldest child is 
away at school. His neighbors, all colored folks, are 
doing tolerably well. They are happy in their church and 
school. Visiting that school, I find it among the live-oaks, 
with cactus and Spanish bayonets in bloom, and mocking- 
birds singing in the trees. I see ten or a dozen ponies 



170 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



picketed, on which some of the children, riding double, 
have come to school, some as far as five miles. The 
teacher is a graduate of Straight University, and she has 
the genius of a teacher and disciplinarian. She has also a 
night school with eleven adult members, among them mine 
host and his wife, who are learning to read and write. 
She also runs the Sunday-school, and is really the mistress 
of the community. And so the one educated girl is lift- 
ing up the whole neighborhood. 

After our three days' meeting we strike next for Goliad, 
thirty-six miles onward. But the colored pastor has looked 
in vain for two days to find one of his strayed ponies. 
Another is borrowed. Ten miles out on the road we espy 
the strayed pony with a herd of horses. And so the 
dominie takes out one pony from the team, and after a two 
hours' chase brings in the captive. At noon, a lunch 
under a live-oak. A sermon at night in Goliad, where is 
also taught a school by another Straight graduate, from 
the household of Rev. Dr. Palmer, in New Orleans, her 
mother being his cook. A half-dozen families bear the 
name of Lott ; and though there are lots of them, yet the 
women all repudiate the character of Lot's wife. Here at 
Goliad we see the Spanish mission where over three hun- 
dred Texan patriot prisoners were slaughtered by order of 
Santa Anna. We pass close to their graves. 

Now for Corpus Christi, eighty miles in the two days 
before Sunday. We camp out, cooking our own coffee 
and meat, and sleeping, black and white together, in an 
open wagon with the stars for sentinels. We find here a 
church and school where Rev. A. Rowe had just put in 
several years of the best of work. As the crusaders con- 
tended for the sepulcher of the Sacred One, so for thirty 
years a legal war has been kept up between an old Spanish 



IN THE SOUTH. 



171 



grant and a Texas warrant as to the possession of this 
"Corpus," and our pleasant sanctuary is the victim of this 
crusade. 

P. S. — Leaving that city, as steamers could not get 
over the bar, I had to take a little sail-boat, by the " in- 
side " route, to Indianola, and we had to beat all the way 
— one hundred and twenty miles — against a "norther," 
harsh and chilly, running around several times and taking 
forty-eight hours for the trip. 



LETTER LXV. 

ALABAMA ANNIVERSARY WEEK. 

Montgomery, Ala., April 2, 1879. 
This is our anniversary week for Alabama. The con- 
ference of churches, the theological institute, the Sabbath- 
school convention, and the Woman's Missionary Association 
are making this a festal time at the capital. This beauti- 
ful city is now in the bloom of our northern June. The 
missionaries are entertained in families which have come 
from the north. Formerly when hearing and reading of 
these rising southern associations and reading the reports 
of the same, I was inclined to think that they must be 
funny meetings, and that the accounts furnished the papers 
must be pretty well colored. Come and see. The church is 
a beautiful and commodious building, located not far from 
the state capitol. The congregation is well dressed and 
intelligent in appearance. The prevailing sable is relieved 
by the white of seven or eight preachers and of nine lady 
teachers and of a few citizens now and then dropping in. 
The singing is led by a choir and reed organ. In public 
worship there are voluntaries and responsive readings and 
the offering of the Lord's Prayer. 



172 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

The association opens, organizes, proceeds with business, 
with essays and discussions, just as any such body would 
at the north, the southern men showing a wonderful apti- 
tude in parliamentary proceeding. The missionaries and 
the native pastors mingle in the services just as though 
they were all of one color. Dr. Flavel Bascom, of Illinois, 
who has served the church here for four months gratui- 
tously, by invitation preaches the opening sermon. His 
address of welcome is a gem. Rev. Dr. Petrie, of this 
city's Presbyterian church, and Judge Bruce, of the United 
States District Court, being present, are made honorary 
members and participate in some of the discussions. 
Nine young men from Professor Andrew's theological 
department at Talladega, are examined for licensure, which 
is cheerfully granted. It is wonderful how much theology 
their instructor does work into them. They seem to take 
to this science with readiness. While engaged in study 
at the college, they prosecute Sunday-school work in the 
country round about, and this has already grown into 
several churches. It is a beautiful sight, that of these 
educated, consecrated young men coming on to use the 
gospel for the elevation of their own people. One young 
man was ordained by council. The theological institute 
is a training in the same line. It takes a day, and so does 
the Sunday-school convention, with its routine of question- 
drawer, papers, discussions, and evening of short speeches 
and reports of the work. So these southern sisters, fol- 
lowing their teachers, are having their Woman's Missionary 
Society. It is a vine resting upon the live-oak of the 
state association. It moves off with the glow and the 
order of such a meeting at the north. And so here were 
five days of consecutive service, each one packed full of 
interest and profit. It was a feast of fat things. All 



LV THE SOUTH. 



173 



remained to the end. After the closing service the people 
to the number of one hundred waited on Dr. Bascom and 
his wife at the Teachers' Home, in a surprise party, which 
testified by music, refreshments, and good cheer their love 
for the departing friends. 

LETTER LXVI. 

THE HAMPTON INSTITUTE. 

Hampton, Va., May 6, 1879. 
This normal and industrial institute is a grand affair. 
It occupies the former site of the government hospitals. 
Adjoining its grounds is the national cemetery, kept with 
the utmost care. Here are the marble headstones of five 
thousand patriot martyrs. The monument in granite, 
built by Miss Dix, is one of imposing impression. Near 
by is also the Soldiers' Home, where Uncle Sam takes 
care of five hundred of his disabled boys, the building 
being that of one of the best of old-time colleges. Two 
miles down is Fortress Monroe and the famous Hygeian 
Hotel. Just over the bay at Portsmouth is the grand 
United States hospital for soldiers ; and over there the 
navy yard of Norfolk. In full view from the institute 
windows is the site of the duel between the Monitor and 
the Merri7nac. It is fitting that a freedmen's school 
should stand in the midst of these historic associations, 
especially so near to the spot where the first cargo of 
slaves was discharged the same year with the landing on 
Plymouth Rock. The chapel built for the use of the 
soldiers, and occupied now as a church by the congrega- 
tion of officers, teachers, and students of the institute, 
sundry citizens also attending, is still allowed to remain 



174 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Standing within the stone walls of the cemetery. So truly 
is the freedmen's temple of liberty and education built 
upon the graves of hundreds of thousands of our patriot 
brothers.^ The institute for its campus and farm owns 
one hundred and fifty acres. The grounds are tastily laid 
out. The buildings make a village as they are scattered 
around in the irregularity of nature. The scholars are 
nearly all of them boarders. The course of study em- 
braces three years. Forty are to graduate this year. 
Fully three fourths will go out as Christians. 

As soon as the first contrabands of General Butler 
came through our lines at this place, the American Mis- 
sionary Association met them with bread and clothing in 
one hand and the spelling-book and the Testament in the 
other, setting up here the first of all the schools for this 
people. General S. C. Armstrong, who has been detailed 
by the Freedmen's Bureau to look after the mass of fugi- 
tive humanity gathered here, conceived the plan of this 
industrial institute, taking his ideal from a school which 
his father, a missionary in the Sandwich Islands, had there 
developed for the natives. The general has pushed the 
enterprise along to a grand accomplishment. The Ameri- 
can Missionary Association, which had founded and sup- 
ported the school in its earlier years, has now transferred 
it to its independent board of trustees. Virginia appro- 
priated one fourth of its United States agricultural scrip 
to this school. This amounted to $95,000, $10,000 of 
which was allowed to be put into lands and buildings. 
The remainder is in the bonds of the state, which pays 
interest on the same toward the running expenses. So 
the Old Dominion has a share in this concern, sending 

1 Mr. E. B. Monroe, the president of the board of trustees, has since built a 
beautiful chapel in stone. He loveth our nation and has built us a synagogue. 



IN THE SOUTH. 



175 



each year its governor or some official to the anniversary 
to inspect the work done. Captain Henry Romeyn, who 
in the last fight with Chief Joseph, was left for dead on 
the field, with a bullet-hole bored through his lungs, has 
been detailed by the government for drill duty in this 
school. His training is manifest in the manliness of the 
boys. With ready skill he turns from military drill to 
devotional exercises, which he leads for the whole school in 
the use of the prayer-book. Dr. Mark Hopkins, that col- 
lege Nestor, is here now with his family, spending a few 
weeks in the home of the General, who is an alumnus of 
Williams, and also a former member of the family of the 
president. The old gentleman, still in the fullness of 
strength, preaches often twice on the Sabbath. Even 
here upon a respite, he must have a room assigned to him 
for a study. May his seventy-four years yet have many 
more added ! The Rev. John H. Dennison, a son-in-law 
of Dr. Hopkins, lately pastor of the First Congregational 
Church in New Britain, Connecticut, is now pastor of 
this new institute church. Governor Smith, of New 
Hampshire, is here to-day examining the establishment 
with apparent delight. 

The Indian department is a specialty at Hampton. 
There are now sixty of these people, male and female, 
under training here. Fifteen came from among the pris- 
oners at St. Augustine, Florida, and the remainder were 
brought from their wild homes in the north-west. The 
Wigwam, a brick hall of three stories, built at a cost of 
$18,000, serves for their dormitory. Some twenty of the 
colored students volunteered as missionaries of civilization 
to go each into a room with a chum of the red color ; and 
each is now expressing much satisfaction with the other. 
In the chapel and at the table the races intermingle. The 



176 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

red students are getting along well in their studies. They 
also take readily to work under the industrial plan. The 
government pays $167 per capita a year toward the ex- 
pense of board, tuition, clothing, and books. 

The industrial is the peculiar feature of the institute. 
It is proving a great success in affording the opportunity 
to young people to help themselves, and in developing the 
habits and the skill of labor. These people need to be 
educated out of the idea that work is degrading. The 
farm is simply a model. It is just now receiving in the 
northern markets $6.25 for a dozen bunches of asparagus. 
Peaches, pears, cherries, peas, greens, etc., bring in turn 
their early prices. The twenty-three cows of blooded 
stock furnish a surplus of milk for the local market. 
Sheep and hogs and horses play their part. A portable 
steam-engine in the model barn threshes, grinds, cuts, and 
steams the fodder, then runs out to saw wood, and in the 
fall goes around to do threshing for the neighbors. Every 
particle of fertilizing is saved. The Indians have a sepa- 
rate shop and a patch of their own for cultivation. Print- 
ing, machine-knitting, tailoring, trimming, blacksmithing, 
and carpentering are carried on. A steam-engine in Vir- 
ginia Hall washes, cooks, prints, and heats. Gas is made 
for home consumption. The smokestack is now going up 
for a sixty-horse engine which Mr. Corliss has given to the 
institute. This is to drive a planing, sawing, and match- 
ing mill. The canning of fruits, crabs, and oysters is also 
to be carried on by that steam. A monthly paper. The 
Workman, is published at one dollar a year. Job printing 
pays well. The series of " Hampton Tracts for the Peo- 
ple " has reached No. 6. They are : The Health Laws of 
Moses ; The Duty of Teachers ; Preventable Diseases ; 
Who Found Jamie .-* A Haunted House ; and Woman's 



IN THE SOUTH. I 'J 'J 

Work in Reform. All are upon sanitary topics, and are 
as good for white savages as for red and black. Another 
farm of a hundred acres, near by, purchased and presented 
by a lady friend, is to be used for stock and agricultural 
purposes. Young men who offer themselves and yet have 
no money are set to work a year on this farm or in the 
sawmill, and so get something ahead on which to start at 
school. Meanwhile they will be gaining some knowledge 
by absorption. Rarely can one find a more beautiful piece 
of educational philanthropy than this ; and then to have 
been so quickly and so grandly developed, that is the won- 
der. Surely the guilty nation does well to make haste in 
securing some partial restitution to these injured races. 
To repress the crowd at Commencement, tickets have to 
be issued. The assembly room endures a jam of twelve 
hundred. Rev. Dr. Hoge, of Richmond, accepts the invi- 
tation to follow with an address the presentation of 
diplomas by the president of the board, Rev, Dr. M. E. 
Strieby. 



LETTER LXVII. 

THE FISK UNIVERSITY. THE JUBILEE HALL. JUBILEE 

SINGERS. 

Nashville, Tenn., May 22, 1879. 
Passing through the city in 1865 on my tour of explora- 
tion, I found here General C. B. Fisk, serving as commis- 
sioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for two or three states. 
Just then Messrs. E. P. Smith and E. M. Cravath came 
along under the auspices of the American Missionary 
Association, to open a school for colored people in Nash- 
ville. General Fisk entered heartily into the work and used 



I 78 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

his influence to secure from the government the hospital 
buildings near the Chattanooga depot. The American 
Missionary Association bought the ground for $i6,ooa. 
The Fisk School was opened January 9, 1866, and during 
the year the number of students ran up to ten hundred. In 
i8j7 the Fisk University was chartered by the state. In 
1 87 1, as the old buildings were going to decay, and as they 
were ill-situated for a school, the idea was conceived by 
Mr. George L. White that his little band of trained singers 
should go out with him as the Jubilee Singers to earn 
money for a new building. I heard them, as unheralded 
they made their debut before the National Congregational 
Council at Oberlin. That dignified body, taken by sur- 
prise, was now melted to tears and now lifted to jubi- 
lation. After the struggle of months, they at last won 
success in a money way. They carried the hearts of the 
lovers of song in America and in Europe. They gained 
the audience of kings, queens, and crown princes, and the 
patronage of the Old World's noblest men. As the result 
of seven years of labor they purchased the present site of 
twenty-five acres and built the majestic Jubilee Hall, put- 
ting into the whole one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
Jubilee Hall is on the site of old Fort Gillem, on the verge 
of the city and in full view of Vanderbilt University, hav- 
ing one of the most commanding and beautiful locations 
on the hill-surrounded city. Its own campus of eight 
acres is walled in with stone and is laid out with walks and 
drives and set with grass and trees. The hall is supplied 
throughout with steam, gas, and water. It stands upon 
bed-rock. Its architecture is superb and is admired quite 
as much as that of the Vanderbilt. It is finished in the 
native color of white pine, the wainscoting on the first 
floor being in a variety of hard woods from Africa, sawed 



IN THE SOUTH. 179 

in the mills of the Mendi Mission. By the efforts of Mrs. 
C. B. Fisk the rooms have been furnished uniformly in 
walnut sets. On the walls of the elegantly upholstered 
parlor are portraits of William Wilberforce, David Living- 
stone, and Lord Shaftesbury, presented to the Jubilee 
Singers, also a mammoth painting of the singers them- 
selves and fine crayons of General Fisk and the lamented 
Reverends E. P. Smith and G. D. Pike, d.d., and other 
living workers. "To what purpose is this waste } " Does 
not the friend of the oppressed answer: "They have 
wrought a good work upon me " ? It was fitting that one 
such monument to emancipation should be built, itself a 
song in crystallization. It was well that the young people 
just out of the house of bondage should set up in behalf 
of their race one testimonial of their capacity. The 
American Missionary Association has no other such struc- 
ture. All its other buildings, present and prospective, 
are planned upon the most rigid idea of economy and 
durability. 

The Baptist Roger Williams College and the Metho'dist 
Central Tennessee College, both located in this city, are 
devoted to the education of the colored youth. They 
have each good, large buildings and are doing a grand 
work. If all these institutions were dependent upon local 
patronage, they would lack of course in constituency. 
But as they draw from the several states around here, they 
have plenty of material. Schools sometimes seek a center 
just as business does. Then each one serves as a stim- 
ulus to the others. Fisk University no doubt has done a 
good deal in provoking good works. The late governor 
and the superintendent of public schools in Tennessee 
have both furnished testimonials to the high quality of 
work done at Fisk. In March last the legislature, having 



l8o PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

attended in a body a literary entertainment gotten up by 
the students at Jubilee Hall, passed a joint resolution, 
expressing thanks to the scholars and commendation of 
the university to the colored people of the state. Last 
summer Fisk sent out one hundred and fifty vacation 
teachers. Four have gone from thi^ place as missionaries 
to Africa. In Texas, Mississippi, and in other southern 
states I have come across the influence of the Fisk 
students. 

The eleventh anniversary has just been obser\'ed. It 
seemed just like any commencement at the north. The 
examinations, lasting through three days, led by written 
questions, were of a most thorough and satisfactory char- 
acter. This college aims to magnify the classical course ; 
and it is no longer a question whether these sable scholars 
can excel in the higher studies. The departments are the 
common school, the normal, the higher normal, the colle- 
giate, and the theological. Reverend Dr. W. H. Willcox, 
representing Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Maiden, Mass., upon 
a recent visit to Fisk, made a pledge of ^60,000 to build 
the Livingstone Hall for chapel, library, class-room, and 
dormitory purposes. This is a portion of the ;^20o,ooo 
which he is assigning to the schools in the south. No 
better direction could be given to such munificence. 



/,, 



PERIOD IX. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1880-82. 

Berea. — National Cemeteries at the South. — Prohibition in North 
Carolina. — East Tennessee. — Anniston. — Memphis. — The Congre- 
gational Methodists. — A July Vacation. — Atlanta Cotton E.xposi- 
tion. — Crossing Boston Mountain. — Confederate Memorial Day in 
New Orleans. — Presbyterian Missions in the South. — North and 
South: Some Things in Common. — Colored Work of Southern 
Churches. 



LETTER LXVIII. 

BEREA COLLEGE. 

Berea, Ky., March i, 1880. 
I REALIZE the wisdom of providence in tucking this 
early mission into such an out-of-the-way locality, though 
it is really in the heart of the commonwealth. It is just 
on the border between the wealthy blue-grass region, 
where the negroes are now, as heretofore, very numerous, 
and the mountain district, where there are scarcely any 
colored people. Out of a population of forty-five thou- 
sand in Jackson County there are only fifty-one colored. 
So the college lays one hand upon the rich plains and 
the other upon the mountains ; and Berea is the first 
institution at the south to secure the co-education of the 
races, though all schools of this system are open to all 
classes irrespective of color. The young people of the 
union-loving but poor mountain people find that here they 
can get the best of educational facilities for one third of 



152 PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 

the cost at other colleges. They have their prejudice 
to overcome, but they find it easier to bear such mortifica- 
tion than to endure the manners of the aristocratic 
students. So Berea runs from year to year with about 
equal numbers of white and black. The last year the 
catalogue counted one hundred and thirty whites and one 
hundred and forty-four blacks, with the sexes in nearly 
equal numbers. The Bereans, with their open Bible and 
its principles of equality, have access to the Sunday- 
school conventions, teachers' institutes, and churches of 
these mountains. President E. H. Fairchild made a tour 
of six weeks through these hill counties, lecturing and 
preaching, every-where meeting a cordial reception. 
Commencements bring out the immense multitudes of 
white and black, the rich coming in carriages from the 
blue-grass country, and the poor coming down from the 
mountains, afoot, on horse-back, on donkeys, and in carts. 
Last summer eight hundred and fifty horses came out and 
neighed and stamped under the shade of the college 
forest to which they had brought from two to three 
hundred people. In the great congregation, on the 
platform, and among the speakers the white and the 
black are about in equal numbers. 

Recently Rev. John G. Fee, the founder, upon invita- 
tion, preached in the Presbyterian church in Richmond, 
the blue-grass county seat. The local paper reported the 
sermon in full with commendation, saying that it was 
the first time that Mr. Fee had ever preached in that 
town, although he had lived in that county for twenty-five 
years. It also said: "One could but recall the trying 
years of the past when the speaker fearlessly combated 
race-prejudice and slavery, when his enemies persecuted 
him and even threatened to take his life — one could but 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 83 

recall those stormy days and at the same time remember 
that when the war was over and Mr, Fee's party was in 
the ascendency, he had no man punished, he sought to 
revenge "no personal grievance, but went on with his life- 
work in his quiet, unobtrusive way, remembering his 
enemies only to forgive them." It was in that same 
Richmond that a convention, held but twenty years ago, 
appointed a committee of "the most wealthy and respect- 
able citizens " to wait upon the Bereans and warn them 
to leave the state in ten days. On horse-back, in martial 
array, those sixty "organized gentlemen" drew up before 
the homes of these unoffending families, and their orders 
had to be obeyed. Now some of the elite of Richmond 
come to commencement. They exchange courteous visits 
with our college people. At the table of the president 
I have dined with a gentleman who came in his carriage 
with his wife and daughters, and who had been of the 
number of those sixty, and the visit was reciprocated. 
The county seat courts the trade and banking of Berea. 
It sends out carriage-loads of visitors to show them the 
Yankee college. 

Twenty years ago one of the daughters of Kentucky, 
equally related to both races, saw fit to use her liberty 
and run away to Chicago. At that time I had my family 
at the Orient Hotel. Her husband was its steward, and 
she the mistress of its laundry. Her master had come 
for her. The biped blood-hound, with U. S. on his collar, 
rushed into the office and demanded his prey. The 
proprietor, a democrat, turned the baying hound off the 
trail by saying that she was not there, and then rushed 
down into the laundry and told Mrs. Webb that she must 
leave instantly. We took her up-stairs into our own suite 
for two days and nights, hiding her in a closet behind the 
secretary. 



184 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXIX. 

THE NATIONAL CEMETERIES AT THE SOUTH, 

Atlanta, Ga., May 30, 1880. 

As my brother, Charles A. Roy, had come on to Chicago 
to be mustered in, I wrote our mother inquiring what 
would be her wish as to his body in case he should lose 
his life. She replied : " Let him be buried where he falls." 
He survived his four years of service. Many other patri- 
otic mothers desired that the remains of their sons should 
mingle with the soil on which they should die for the life 
of the nation. But they did not imagine that the precious 
dust of their sons would be gathered into such noble cem- 
eteries as these, there to have surviving comrades as their 
wardens, with the Stars and Stripes ever afloat above them. 
It was an inspiration on the part of the man who con- 
ceived the idea of these national burial-places over the 
south. 

Before the war I had known a deacon in Indiana who 
went into the service. After I came to reside in this city, 
his widow wrote me that he had been buried on the spot 
where he fell on the side of Kenesaw Mountain, and 
requested me to learn, if possible whether the grave with 
its simple headboard could yet be recognized. She had 
known nothing of the system of national cemeteries over 
the south, and so nothing of that one at Marietta within 
three miles of the grave she was inquiring about, I went 
out to that camp of sleeping patriots. The superintend- 
ent took his book and found the name, the regiment, the 
company of Indiana soldiers, and the tier and the number 
of his grave. I went out and followed along the rows of 
white marble memorials that stand a foot and a half above 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 85 

the ground, until I came to the right place, and there I 
read the name of my friend, my own heart overflowing 
with gratitude for the paternal care thus manifested by 
the government for its patriot dead. I wrote the facts to 
the widow. She answered in over-joy. If she should 
come down to visit the grave of her husband, arriving at 
Marietta, she would find herself in one of the most 
pleasant towns in the land — itself eleven hundred feet 
above the sea, and so, with its balmy and bracing air, one 
of the most attractive health resorts for summer and win- 
ter. Just there only two miles away is Kenesaw ; and 
there is Lone Mountain ; and there Altoona. And here 
only half a mile from the railway station, upon a lofty 
swell of land, is the cemetery, the site itself the gift of a 
Union eastern man, whose home was just across the way, 
whose fine hotel had been burned by the rebels, and whose 
body now rests along with those of the soldiers to whom 
he had proffered such hospitality. The hundred-acre lot 
is enclosed with a solid stone wall laid up in mortar. The 
drives, walks, and the adornments of trees, shrubs, flowers, 
and grass are such as we find in our home cemeteries. 
The Bermuda grass, with its tenacity of root, survives the 
heat of these seasons and prevents the wash of these red 
clay hills. In long circling tiers you see the headstones 
of marble, on each of which is inscribed the name, the 
title, and the regiment of the deceased. You come to the 
crest and there find the flag-staff with the colors flying, 
and columbiads planted in the earth, standing as the 
sentries of the place. You come to the lodge of the 
superintendent and you find it a beautiful rustic cottage, 
embowered in vine and bloom. You enter the ofiice, recoid 
your name, inspect the records of interments, and find them 
to number in all 10,142, of which 2,963 are "unrecognized." 



I 86 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

You make the acquaintance of the official and find him a 
gentleman, a wounded brave, detailed from the army for 
this service. You see the squad of men kept at work 
upon the grounds. You discover here and there among 
the headstones the monuments which loving friends have 
put in place. You read the placarded laws of Congress 
for the protection and management of these cemeteries. 
And you retire under a fresh impulse of love for the re 
public which thus marks its gratitude to the men who for 
its life gave up their own. This is a specimen. I have 
visited several others. At Chattanooga it is an immense 
area of hill and slope, encircled with a wall of stone- 
masonry ; its well-shaven lawns are a delight. Here under 
their country's flag, with Lookout Mountain and Mission- 
ary Ridge standing guard about them, sleep 12,962 patriots, 
awaiting the reveille of the resurrection morn. Over the 
neutral ground of Kentucky, Fort Nelson stood guard, in 
its impregnable position, within the horseshoe bend of 
the Kentucky River, which flows through a canon of three 
hundred feet of perpendicular rock, all the way round. 
That is now a camp of the dead, whose keeper, a hardy 
German, is a mutilated soldier. 

I give the full statistics. There are eighty-two of these 
national cemeteries. Virginia has seventeen ; Tennessee, 
seven ; Kentucky, si.x ; Lousiana, Maryland, Illinois, and 
North Carolina, each four — sixteen ; Mississippi, Arkan- 
sas, and Missouri, each three — nine ; District of Colum- 
bia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kansas, 
Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, each 
two — twenty; West Virginia, Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska, 
Montana, and Indian Territory, each one — six. The 
most numerously tenanted are : — 



IN THE SOUTH. 



187 



Vicksburg, Miss. 


16,600 


Stone River, Tenn. 


6,145 


Nashville, Tenn. 


16,526 


Corinth, Miss. 


5.716 


Arlington, Va. 


16,264 


Soldiers' Home, D. 


C. 5,602 


Fredericksburg, Va. 


15.257 


Little Rock, Ark. 


5,602 


Memphis, Tenn. 


13.977 


Hampton, Va. 


5.424 


Andersonville, Ga. 


13.714 


Mound City, 111. 


5,226 


Chattanooga, Tenn. 


12,962 


Antietam, Md. 


4,671 


Chalurette, La. 


12,511 


Winchester, Va. 


4,459 


Salisbury, N. C. 


12,126 


Port Hudson, La. 


3,819 


Jefferson Barracks, Mo. 


1 1 ,490 


Pittsburg Landing, 


Tenn. 3,590 


Marietta, Ga. 


10,142 


Gettysburg, Penn. 


3.575 


Beaufort, N. C. 


9,241 


Newberne, N. C. 


3.254 


Richmond, Va. 


6,542 








Poplar Grove, Va. 


6,199 


Total, 


329.369 



Of these there are "known," 173,088; "unknown," 
148,281. There are, of civUians, "known," 6,900; "un- 
known," 1,500. And of the total there are of confederate, 
"known," 6,110; "unknown," 3,200. The confederates 
are mostly at Elmira, New York, and Finn's Point, New 
Jersey. Of course this summary does not include all 
those who were not brought home for burial. Many, 
buried where they fell, were not discovered for re-interment 
in the cemeteries. These grand cemeteries remind us also 
of the soldiers' homes, soldiers' colleges, the pensions, the 
homesteads, and the pay provided by a grateful nation. 
And this in turn suggests the utter lack of all these re- 
wards on the part of the confederate soldiers. They have 
no such cemeteries. Many were buried in the local city 
of the dead. Their pay was in confederate money, which 
was "not worth a continental." No soldiers' homes, no 
pensions, no homesteads, no colleges for their children ! 

But who at the south shall be found on Decoration day, 
to scatter flowers on these scores of thousands of Union 
graves } Oh, that is all provided for ! In this part of the 
country there are millions of souls that never drew a dis- 



t88 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

loyal breath. They are easily known by the color given 
them by their Creator, and these are the people who deco- 
rate our cemetery graves. No more grateful and loving 
tributes are paid up north on these days than by our dusky 
orators down here. At Atlanta they celebrate every 
returning Memorial day, going out to Marietta, nineteen 
miles, by special train. And the patriot north is grateful 
to them for these delicate attentions to its soldier dead. 
But of their own 178,896 colored heroes, they have 80,000 
graves to be decorated. And what shall be done to these 
sable loyalists .-' Make good their rights. Reverence their 
manhood. Help them to all Christian enlightenment. 
And they in turn will buttress our civil fabric. 



LETTER LXX. 

SNOW. COLD. NORTH CAROLINA ON PROHIBITION. 

Atlanta, Ga., January 17, 1881. 

At last the south and the north have been sleeping 
under the same blanket. Nor was the covering narrower 
than that they could wrap themselves in it, for it lapped 
over on Canada and was tucked under at Galveston on the 
Gulf. For thirty years never was known so much snow at 
the south nor so much cold. But time, the weaver, has in 
loom a counterpane that will yet serve these two bed- 
fellows throughout the year, the coming of national good 
feeling. May the shuttle fly fast ! 

For the last ten days I was scouring along the way from 
New York to this gate city. I found the capital of the old 
north state a-buzz, not so much with the gossip of the leg- 
islature, as with the deeply earnest talk of the prohibition 
convention which had been going on for two days and 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 89 

which was striving to get prohibition submitted to the 
vote of the people. I had to verify my reckonings to see 
if I had not drifted out to Kansas or up to Maine. At 
the hotels, on the streets, every-where, prohibition was the 
theme. Convention men were stirring up their represent- 
atives, many of whom were in the convention meetings 
and participants in the same. Mammoth petitions were 
pouring in. One county presented a roll of twenty-six 
hundred voters. The ex-United States Senator Merriman 
filled two hours of one evening with the tersest eloquence 
upon the legal and financial bearings of the case, stating 
that the social considerations came too near him to allovy 
him to dwell upon them. His own son had been ruined 
by drink. The ninety-four counties of the state were all 
represented. Strangely, it was said, that every one of 
the western counties, where the "moon-shiners" and the 
blockaders have their hidden stills, would vote for the 
law. Free whiskey was startling the people. This is well, 
in the old commonwealth which boasts a declaration of 
independence prior to 1776.^ A look into the legislature 
found two dignified, business-like bodies. The colored 
members numbered twenty, surely no undue proportion 
for a people that now count up in the state a population of 
530,000. Much has been said in horror of those early 
" nigger legislatures," It is yet a fact that in that noted 
legislature there were only seventeen colored members. 
And of the whites the mass were native southerners. The 
grand Mogul who was said to have bought the legisla- 
tors of both houses was a democrat, and the man who 
received five hundred of the bonds was another. " Let 
not pot call kettle black." 

iThat election snowed under the constitutional amendment. But the people 
are at it again by the local option plan. The colored people will not be deceived 
again as they were on that first vote. As it was, those of them who had been under 
the influence of the mission schools and churches voted on the right side. 



igO PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXXI. 

EAST TENNESSEE. 

Maryville, February ii, 1881. 

Between the Smoky Mountains or the Blue Ridge on 
the east and the Cumberland Mountains on the west there 
is a broad trough extending diagonally across the state. 
Through it runs the Tennessee River, which, at Chatta- 
nooga, cleaves, the western chain, passing between the 
abutments of Lookout Mountain and Walden's Ridge, 
then coming westward to swing back and cross the state 
again, from south to north. Through this valley also runs 
the East Tennessee Railroad, connecting the north-east 
with the south-west by the Kenesaw route. But it is a 
valley made up of hills and vales and mountain affluents. 
It has its beds of coal and iron and marble. In one quarry 
of marble, now being opened, on the bank of the river and 
near the rail track, there are found eight mottled varieties, 
assorted and arranged in nature's own cabinet. It has a 
rich, strong soil, fitted to the grasses, fruits, and cereals. 
Cattle, horses, and mules are a staple, and their market is 
found in the cotton regions below. In four months 
Atlanta sold 14,500 horses and mules, mostly from Ten- 
nessee. Of course such a country is extremely healthy. 
In general, it is like western Pennsylvania, with a mild 
climate. 

Maryville, a county seat, is the present terminus of a 
railroad, which, coming from Knoxville, is to be carried on 
over the mountains to Augusta, Ga. During the war 
General Wheeler came with a force to dislodge some 
twenty Union men, who had fortified themselves in the 
brick court-house. Not being able to reach the garrison 



IN THE SOUTH. 



191 



on account of the flying of patriot bullets, he set fire to a 
house near by, expecting it to communicate with the seat 
of county justice. But the wind shifted, saved the Union- 
ists, and swept away several confederate homes. Then a 
resort to a cannonade brought the beleaguered to a sur- 
render, which, it came out, was upon the firing of the last 
round of ammunition. Burnside was cooped up in Knox- 
ville ; Sherman, coming to his rescue, had got as far as 
Maryville when the siege was raised. Sherman's encamp- 
ment was upon a farm of a hundred acres, which was a 
single lofty and perfect dome, adjoining the town. From 
this spot you view for long distances the east and the 
west mountain ranges, whose crests are one hundred miles 
apart. That farm has been changed into a cedar park, 
that sweet-smelling evergreen having come up spontane- 
ously over the whole area ; and its summit has exchanged 
the encampment for the three stately structures of the 
Maryville College, which, up to the end of the war, had 
occupied its contracted village lot, and which, during the 
war, had furnished a rendezvous alternately for confederate 
and federal forces. In 18 19 the college was founded by 
the Rev. Dr. Isaac Anderson. At the time of the great 
Presbyterian excision the synod, to which the institution 
belonged, went with the new school ; and now it abides 
with the general assembly of the north. In its day the 
college has educated more than one hundred and twenty 
ministers, nearly all of whom are natives of East Tennes- 
see. These mountains produce a good deal of ministerial 
timber. In my class of 1853, at Union Seminary, J. G. 
Lamar, George Caldwell, and John McCampbell were of 
this stock. As George was finishing the reading of Uncle 
Tom's Cabin in the serial of TJie National Era, I looked 
over his shoulder in the reading-room and asked him if he 



192 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

were going back south to take the part of his namesake in 
that story. He answered encouragingly. However, in 
the great strife he went with his section, and is now 
pastor at Bristol, Tenn. McCampbell lost his life at Gra- 
nada during the recent pestilence. Lamar has served his 
Alma Mater through all these years as a professor. In our 
class was also Peter Mason Bartlett, who for the last 
twelve years has been the president of this institution. A 
brother of his, Alexander, from Oberlin, is also a professor. 

-After the war General Howard appropriated $16,000 
toward the new buildings, on condition that colored stu- 
dents should be allowed free access to the college. With 
not a little of effervescence the covenant has been kept. 
Two most excellent colored young men, whom I have been 
visiting with reference to a missionary life-work in Africa, 
were educated here and in the theological department of 
Howard University. I find two talented fellows of African 
descent now studying here. Dropping in upon President 
Bartlett's class in geology, I saw one of the two haul out 
of his pocket for inspection a lot of crystal quartz, which 
he had gathered up in the mountains where he had been 
teaching school. 

In 1 82 1 the synod of Tennessee, replying to an address 
of the Manumission Society, said : — 

We lament the existence of slavery in our otherwise free and happy 
country as the greatest natural and moral evil that has ever existed in 
our country. We firmly believe it is such an evil as will ruin our coun- 
try most inevitably, unless prevented by a gracious God. The princi- 
ples of slavery are at war with all the natural rights of men and hostile 
to all the principles of natural and revealed religion. We can not doubt 
for a moment but that God will one day plead the cause of the 
oppressed, either by causing the power of his holy religion to be so 
felt that the people shall be willing to let the oppressed go free : or he 
will unbind their burden by his own almighty hand, and by his right- 
eous judgments set the captive at liberty. 



IN THE SOUTH. 



193 



I quote this from an alumni address of Professor Craw- 
ford, himself a native Tennesseean, who thus fortifies the 
present rule of the college. He also says that President 
Anderson, in his day, brought colored young men into the 
college, and even kept them in his own house, without any 
objection being made. 



LETTER LXXII. 

WOODSTOCK IRON COMPANY. 

Anniston, Ala., March 17, 1881. 
It is but a few years since the site of this town was 
a red-hilled, gullied, cheerless old plantation. It was 
bought by the Woodstock Iron Company, and now it has 
two furnaces that turn out daily forty tons of charcoal 
pig-iron, a cotton factory that turns five thousand spindles, 
which will be increased to ten thousand, and has recently 
declined an order of a thousand bales (one million yards) 
for the China market. It has a large grist-mill, a steam- 
ginnery, a planing-mill, a country store that carries an 
immense stock of all kinds of goods. The company is 
now putting in water-works at an expense of thirty 
thousand dollars, and is building a macadamized road 
over the mountain into the Chocollocco Valley at a cost 
of one hundred and five thousand dollars. The town is 
finely laid out with worked streets and well-set shade- 
trees. The homes of the proprietors are palatial. Of 
the estate of twenty thousand acres five hundred are under 
cultivation as a model farm, with Alderney cows upon 
green pastures. Before the company has opened its lots 
for sale the population has come up to fourteen hundred. 



194 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

As soon as the town is opened to the public there will be 
a grand rush. An immense car-wheel foundry and a car- 
factory are coming here. A grand winter hotel is to be 
built. The colored people, who are the operatives, are 
provided with a church and school by the American 
Missionary Association. General Tyler, of Connecticut, 
and his son, and the Noble brothers, are at the head of 
all this. 



LETTER LXXIII. 

THE CONGREGATIONAL METHODISTS. 

Atlanta, Ga., May 13, 1881. 
At the National Council in St. Louis fraternal dele- 
gates were appointed to visit some of the southern ecclesi- 
astical bodies. Doctors Sturtevant and Goodell were to 
visit the Presbyterian General Assembly South, and Dr. 
F. A. Noble and Rev. T. L. Day to visit the General 
Conference of Congregational Methodists. As the last- 
named delegation were not able to come I was glad to 
comply with the request to serve as a substitute. I found 
the body in session at Fredonia, Ga. I was received with a 
royal welcome by mine host, a native Georgian whose farm 
was that of a thrifty Yankee, and also by the conference. 
Congregational Methodism took its rise in this state 
twenty-nine years ago, in 1852. It came up as a protest 
against the peculiar elements in the government of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. And now they boast since 
their secession both branches of the old church, north 
and south, have put in lay delegation, have increased the 
duration of the local pastorate, and have given up, at 
least in that region, the week-day preachin:;s of thj 



IN THE SOUTH. 



195 



itinerants, against which they rebelled. The Congrega 
tional Methodist churches are all in country places. 
Their people are generally among the poor. They have, 
as a rule, with exceptions, monthly Sabbath preaching, 
one minister serving one, two, or three or four churches. 
They now have state conferences in Georgia, Alabama, 
Texas, Mississippi, and Missouri. They number one 
hundred and twenty-five churches and about as many 
ministers, with about ten thousand members. They have 
the beginning of a college at Harpersville, Miss., under Rev. 
J. F. N. Huddleston and his son. They have a paper, 
TJie Congregational Methodist, at Cave Spring, Ga., near 
Rome, published by L. J. Jones, Esq., who was the 
moderator of the conference. It is an able journal, a 
worthy organ. At first they took the name of Independ- 
ent Methodists, but they soon found that they needed 
fellowship, and so changed to the name which carries that 
idea. They have but one order in the ministry. Pastors 
are chosen by the churches, to remain by mutual approval. 
Their constitution has a strong article on temperance, 
and they stand by it nobly. They say that the regular 
Methodists ignore them as much as though they were 
missionaries to the freedmen. They have a history of 
their church by Rev. S. C. McDaniel, of Griffin, Ga. 
They are Methodistic in doctrine and mode of worship, 
and Congregational in polity. The admirable letter of 
Mr. Day to the conference followed his Christian, Con- 
gregational, and patriotic sentiments with a commendation 
of the workers of the American Missionary Association 
and with the suggestion : " If any of you who are our 
brethren in the faith should ever come to see the good 
results from their efforts and should be moved to speak 
the word of sympathy to those engaged in this lonely 



I9<^ PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

and difficult work, it will surely be reckoned to you by 
our Lord and Master as the cup of cold water in the name 
of a disciple." And then, as if to answer in deed as well 
as in word, the conference made haste to receive the 
visiting brother with a welcoming address, to assign to 
him a preaching appointment, and to seek his views in 
matters of Congregational polity. By their rule, at the 
communion, members may receive it in a sitting, kneeling, 
or standing posture. They give up the Episcopal and 
Methodist order of serving the minister first. An old 
colored disciple at the last came forward alone. It was 
touching to see the grace with which the venerable men 
officiating, before being served themselves, became his 
servants for Christ's sake, and to hear the hearty response 
to his ejaculations as he turned away. He was the only 
colored member left in those churches. I found that the 
brethren would be glad of outside fellowship, but they 
had no idea of becoming associated with any other 
denomination. 



LETTER LXXIV. 

Clifton Springs, N. Y., July 31, 188 1. 
"Once at Clifton, always there." That is a proverb. 
Well, why not } Dr. Cuyler boasts of his thirty years at 
Saratoga Springs ; and he has been a tolerably healthy 
man, able to do some work in preaching and writing for 
the newspapers. Multitudes of other people go to the 
same place year after year for rest and recuperation ; and 
so do many find it to their inclination and profit to come 
to these springs season after season. The make-up of 
Dr. Foster's sanitarium develops a peculiar home feeling. 
The judicious medical treatment, if needed, is an attrac- 



IN THE SOUTH. 197 

tion. The water, with its sulphates of lime and magnesia 
and soda, has in many cases a remedial quality. I think 
that within the time I get more revivification here than I 
could get anywhere else, and so I am now on my fourth 
summer at Clifton. 

Nor can I refrain from saying that I find a peculiar 
pleasure in coming back to this place, where, during two 
years of enforced respite from labor, God was preparing 
my mind for the transition in his life-plan for me, by which 
I was to be taken from my own dear west and set to doing 
much the same work at the south, which I had already 
learned to love. Here I told the Lord that if he would 
let me up so that I could again preach the gospel of his 
dear Son, I would go anywhere, even to the ends of the 
earth. But I may as well confess that when he took me 
at my word and pointed out the field, it did cost a struggle, 
a night without sleep. Up north to have been a good 
friend of the slave was one thing ; to go down and put 
one's self by the side of the depressed ex-bondman, to 
take chances with him, to try to lift him up, that was an- 
other. Now I bless God for the joy of the work. It is a 
missionary service without the labor of acquiring and 
using a strange language. It is in some sense the work 
of a foreign missionary without going from under the flag 
of one's own country. I feel unworthy of the gratitude 
of these people, of whom the Master speaks as " these 
my brethren." These two years I have gone every-where, 
from Virginia to Texas, without receiving one word or act 
of discourtesy, but with many tokens of approbation from 
my white fellow-citizens. 

In the review, this seems yet the exigent work of the 
time. It is not the caring for one, two, or three new ter- 
ritories or states at a time, but for five millions of people 
scattered over fifteen states, who are needing, all at once, 



198 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

the helping hand. This going back and forth makes one 
reaUze that this is all one country, with one language, with 
one history, with one Christian religion, with one inter- 
blended destiny ; that the comfort of the whole body must 
depend upon the welfare of every member ; and that so 
our common patriotism requires the uplifting of these 
lowly poor. This glance back over the field brings 
immense encouragement as to the results of this evangel- 
izing process ; brings assurance that, if it is only prose- 
cuted with vigor, there need be no fear as to the outcome 
of the great act of emancipation ; and brings evidence 
of cheerfulness and happiness among the hundreds of 
workers, northern and native, male and female. 

As my eye takes its usual course on the map and sweeps 
around the coast from the point where the old Mason and 
Dixon's line struck the Atlantic to the boundary of Mexico, 
all the way I am reminded of colleges and academies, and 
normal institutes and high schools, which are sources of 
light, fountains of blessing ; of the hundreds upon hundreds 
of primary schools in which, during the last year, the 
native teachers of our own training were instructing 
one hundred and fifty thousand pupils ; of the seventy 
churches of the primitive faith, which are the outgrowth 
of that educational scheme, and which, as to their influence 
for good, by their character are multiplying their number 
many times ; of the multitudes of youth in those higher 
schools, who are ambitiously taking on a Christian culti- 
vation that they may use it for the good of their people ; 
of those Christian congregations so hungry for the Word 
of God, so anxious for the best things in church life ; of 
those masses, beset with ignorance and superstition and 
unthrift, who need to be rallied by some worthy aspiration. 
And then I turn with all hope to that corps of men and 



IN THE SOUTH. 1 99 

women, who, under God, have wrought such great things 
already, whose excelling in the passive virtues has com- 
manded respect, and made it so comfortable for those of 
us who come to join them now, and whose service for the 
republic and the kingdom makes them high benefactors 
in our time and land. 



LETTER LXXV. 

THE COTTON EXPOSITION. 

Atlanta, Ga., December 7, 1881. 
The International Cotton Exposition is a grand suc- 
cess, in its make-up and in its influence. Eli Whitney 
made cotton king. Edward Atkinson invented this idea. 
Atlanta sent for him and put him into the Opera House. 
He spoke to the people on political matters in a saucy 
way, but yet carried them .for the great show. With 
money from the north and with the engineering of a Yan- 
kee director, H. I. Kimball, who has done more for re- 
building Atlanta than any other man, the Atkinsonian 
idea is now a fact. The extent of the buildings and of 
the exhibit has surprised almost every one who has come 
to see for himself. The opening was a grand affair, with 
prayer, the chorus singing of a hundred voices, led by 
Mr. C. M. Cady, and with the addresses of men from the 
north and the south. All of these were aglow with patri- 
otism. The speech of Colonel Breckenridge, of Kentucky, 
was a gem in its elocution and its devout and national 
sentiment. The attendance is running now at about nine- 
teen or twenty thousand a day. This is planters' week. 
Their association is now in session here. Before that 
body I heard this morning Commissioner Loring's admir- 



200 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

able address upon the mutual relation of our national 
industries. On the twenty-sixth of this month is to come 
Freedmen's day, with Fred Douglass as orator. 

Through the season upon the grounds had been culti- 
vated a field of cotton as a specimen. Some of it was 
picked, ginned, spun, woven, and made into a suit of 
clothes, all in one day, for Governor Colquitt, and worn by 
him at the reception that same night. All the implements 
for the culture and the manufacture of this product are on 
exhibition. Whitney's gin, which works with many circu- 
lar saws, set upon a cylinder, finds after nearly a hundred 
years a competitor, which pulls the lint off from the seed 
instead of cutting it off, and so prevents the breaking of 
the fiber. Here is the improved machinery for cleaning 
out the dust, sand, and broken pods. Formerly the seed 
was wasted, now it is utilized. One machine plucks off 
the remnant of the cotton, and another grinds the seed, 
separating the hulls to be", used for fertilizing, from the 
meat which is to be pressed into oil. Cotton-seed oil is 
now a great business. It is offered as a substitute for 
lard. It is used in all forms of mixture. I have seen ships 
on the Atlantic coast loading with raw cotton-seed which 
was to be shipped to the Mediterranean, and there to be 
made into "pure olive oil " and shipped back to this coun- 
try as an article of table luxury. But now we make our 
own olive oil without the trouble and expense of shipping 
it across the ocean and back again. Before our eyes goes 
on the process of ginning, cleaning, carding, spinning, and 
weaving. As a happy thought, by the side of these auto- 
matic machines, a half-dozen country women are carding, 
spinning, and weaving with their old apparatus. The pro- 
duction of spool cotton is the constant wonder of the 
crowd. After Professor Francis had taken the students 



IN THE SOUTH. 20I 

of Atlanta University through the apartments, the thread 
proprietor sent them over two hundred and fifty boxes of 
his spool cotton. Nothing on the grounds was a more 
notable representation than this company of genteel 
young people who are enjoying the opportunity of higher 
education ; even as it was a worthy exhibit at the Centen- 
nial when the American Missionary Association hung up 
a great map of our country, starred with its hundreds of 
schools in the south. 

Three or four of the southern railroads have made a 
wonderful display of the products along their line — the 
grains, the fruits, the ores, the coal, the minerals, the 
stone, the marble, the timber. These mountains are full 
of riches. As the barb-wire of Washburn, Moen & Co. 
is made before our eyes by its own machinery, I call to 
mind my once going into the works of the inventor, Mr. 
Glidden, of DeKalb, Illinois, where he was making this 
wire in the old-fashioned rope-walk way, twisting the wires 
and putting in the barbs by hand. 

The other day Governor Colquitt took over to the 
Atlanta University fifteen of the cotton-spinners, who left 
as a token of good-will $700, which in a few days was 
increased to $1,123. So the Cotton Exposition has been 
spinning and weaving a web of good feeling. Indeed, 
a common remark is : " It is the greatest thing in the 
world for the sake of harmony." I hear the southerners 
saying on the cars, " Why, when these Yankees come 
down here and find that we do not eat them up, they go 
back with better feeling toward the south " ; not observing 
that any part of the change has been made in themselves. 
And I hear the northerners remark : " When the south- 
erners find that we have no hoofs nor horns they think 
better of us." 



202 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXXVI. 

CROSSING BOSTON MOUNTAIN IN ARKANSAS. 

Fort Smith, Ark., March 4, 1882. 
At the time of the taking of Arkansas Post, I was on 
a sanitary boat in the fieet of steamers that could be 
accommodated in the White River near its mouth. Be- 
tween Memphis and Little Rock I have crossed the river 
by a railway bridge that furnishes a draw for passing 
steamboats. Rising in the mountains of Arkansas, it 
takes a notion to frisk away up into Missouri before 
returning to take its diagonal shoot across its native state. 
Just now it is assuming to be the pathfinder for the Arkan- 
sas division of the Frisco Railroad, as that line seeks to 
find a way southward over the Boston Mountain, which 
runs east and west in a range across the southern part of 
Washington County, thirty or forty miles long, and ten or 
twelve wide. So, as the railway, six miles south of Fay- 
etteville, struck the west fork of the White, I was glad to 
make the acquaintance of its upper waters and its source. 
A laughing mill-stream it is. For six miles further on it 
coquets with the steam-horse. Then by stage we follow 
along its course, as it swings back and forth within its own 
beautiful valley, gradually diminishing, and all the time 
increasing in elevation, until it is found to be only such a 
spring as would answer for a single household ; and it has 
led the path of the iron-horse up the side of the Boston 
Mountain, until we leave the engineers boring a tunnel 
through which to shoot across to the other side, while our 
coach and four climb on to the very summit, giving us, as 
we ascend, a splendid view into that very mouth of the 
earth. All the way on the other bank hundreds of men 



IN THE SOUTH. 203 

and teams are preparing the rock-based grade. In the 
midst of this rainy winter the hauling of ties and cement 
and stone, and of forage and supplies for the string of 
extempore villages of cabin and tent, up on one side and 
down on the other, has cut up the road so that it has 
become inconceivably execrable. But reaching the top at 
sunset, we are rewarded with a view of surrounding and 
still higher points, and breathe an air that is 1,878 feet 
above the level of the sea. The keeper of the Mountain 
House tells us that last winter he had thirty-three snow- 
storms, one of which measured fifteen inches of snow-fall, 
while the mercury once touched eighteen degrees below. 
But this winter, with him, is open and warm. 

In the darkness, with only our two candles in the lan- 
tern to light us down the mountain-side, with the road 
deep in mud, rutted and full of chuck holes, with jagged 
rock corduroying the way, we set out for the descent. 
We scarcely measure the length of our team and coach 
before we come near ditching the whole concern. We 
swing to the right side or the left to balance up. One or 
two leap out upon the break to bear down. Soon the 
most of us dismount and walk, in mud and among briers, 
brush, and stocks, down the two miles of the toughest of 
the way. We get in. It is a tempestuous voyage for our 
pitching craft. Of course one thinks of brother Pickett's 
fatal mountain stage-ride. As we pass along before bed- 
time, the cheery lights of the cabins and tents of the army 
of graders only tantalize us with their symbol of rest and 
safety, while we are straining every nerve to keep ourselves 
in position and in equilibrium. 

It is half-past one. We have been six hours coming 
twelve miles. But we are over the worst. For a way the 
road is a little bit smooth ; when lo, over goes the coach 



204 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

with a crash, upon one side. Eight men are jumbled to- 
gether. Up through the hillside sash we crawl, and find 
that all are slightly hurt but none seriously. VVe turn 
back the vehicle and make repairs and adjustments. The 
sachels and the mail are back in the boot again. One 
lamp is smashed, but the air is so quiet that its candle 
burns on without the glass. " But what is this here on 
the ground .-' " " It is George's," they say ; and he picks it 
up and puts it back into his pocket again, a nearly emptied 
flask of whiskey, and he gets back to his place with the 
driver and we start on. How strange that, having passed 
over the worst, we should now go over where there was a 
plain and open way. We had driven out of the road and 
up a bank where the tip was inevitable ; but it was not 
upon the frightful rocks nor down a precipice. 

I call to mind that George, a deputy United States mar- 
shal at the stable, had said to Dave, the driver, that he 
had made one driver drunk, because it made him drive the 
better. Bravely Dave replied : " I would like to see you 
make me drunk." A skillful, trusted man he was. Like 
Uncle Tom, he did not have the smell of horses come 
upon him. He was a gentleman of the gloves and rib- 
bons. His horses were taken from him and brought back 
to him in order. But at the first shanty saloon, both got 
down from the box and went in to drink. At the next 'it 
was the same. The flask up in that sly dark place was 
doing its work, so that the man who had brought us safely 
over the worst part of the way, when the whiskey had 
dulled his sense, ran up a bank in clear sailing. 

It is four miles further on at Mountainburg and its 
post-ofifice. All see the stupefying effect and propose that 
we go on to the woods, light a fire, and wait for day, for 
Frog Mountain is ahead of us, with its zigzagging road up 



IN THE SOUTH. 



205 



the precipitous way for a mile. But once started, on we 
go. George has turned into the coach to sleep off his 
drunkenness. Another who knows the way gets up with 
the driver to hold the candle lamp. This writer prefers to 
walk up that mountain by the side of the horses in the 
midst of their splashing in the deep mud. They know 
the way, the noble brutes, and, stopping by their own 
sweet wills to breathe, at last they take the long inspira- 
tion of the mountain-top. A mile further on my fellow- 
passengers at last are all asleep. There is one sentinel on 
the box, and one within, with an eye on the wheel-track. 
" You are out of the road " is the warning. The next 
moment a heavy thud reveals that we are brought up 
against a large stump, with a clear way at hand and both 
lamps burning. I alight. Stupidly the driver says, " I 
don't believe that I know what I am about." It is now 
four o'clock. We have made twenty miles in eight and a 
half hours. We kindle a fire and wait for day, and then 
in we come. Of course I report the case to the proprie- 
tor, who may have occasion, with other people, to learn 
that many an accident, so-called, is a willful crime, and so 
the " crossing of Boston Mountain " has its moral. 



2 06 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXXVIL 

GEORGE W. CABLE. CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY. 

New Orleans, La., April lo, 1882. 

This is the home of George W. Cable, the ex-confeder- 
ate soldier, the son and the grandson of a slave-holder. 
He is known here as a simple-hearted Christian. He 
gives himself to humanitarian services in the city, which 
endears him to the people. Meeting him the other day, 
as I congratulated him upon his rising literary fame, he 
responded only as to his sense of responsibility to use 
his opportunity for doing good. Last year I was present 
at the anniversary of the New Orleans Sunday-school 
Association, when the addresses were on the several 
parts of the lesson for the next Lord's day, which hap- 
pened to be that of the Good Samaritan. The meeting 
was in a large hall and the choice Christian people were 
there. To Mr. Cable, as his part, was assigned "The 
Unfortunate Victim." He read a paper which in its 
literary finish was ready for the printer, and which in its 
exegesis was critical and philanthropic and plucky as it 
was true. That victim he now found in an amalgam of 
the red, the yellow, and the black man on our continent, 
specifying, as to the last, that he ought to be welcomed 
to our church pews, and not left to the second table at 
the Lord's Supper, nor crowded up into the gallery, nor 
into a corner. 

I am here just at the time of the confederate memorial 
service. It is useless to attempt to describe the display 
of tiowers at the monuments of the army of northern 
Virginia and of Stonewall Jackson. The telling thing 
was the overture of peace from the Grand Army of the 



IN THE SOUTH. 20/ 

Republic. At one monument they had a stack of arms, 
made all of flowers, and resting upon a base of bloom. 
At the other they had a howitzer resting upon a platform 
of bloom and green, and itself belted with exquisite 
flowers, while across its mouth a bird's nest was sus- 
pended, with two birdies holding up their open bills, into 
which the parent, perched upon the upper edge, was 
dropping a morsel, and that bird was a blue-jay, to 
symbolize the boys in blue. 

Here at this time I realize the mighty flood that is 
bearing down from the Mississippi Valley upon this delta, 
deluging houses, estates, cities, and small empires. Here 
the argument for federal aid in shoring up the banks of 
the great river seems to submerge all the theories of the 
inviolability of states' rights. The destruction of the 
sugar crop and the general damage are simply dreadful. 
Returning from Texas by way of Little Rock I came 
into the middle of the floods at White River, where to 
reach Memphis we were obliged to leave the rail and 
to go down that river one hundred and seventy-five miles 
to its mouth, and then two hundred miles up the 
Mississippi, to make the eighty-seven miles over from 
that break. Rarely did we come in sight of land. At 
one place we landed passengers on the top of a house to 
go ashore by boat. We saw cattle huddled together on 
the levees and on rafts. And we saw men in canoes 
cutting cane brush and barking the trees for forage to 
keep those cattle alive. For most of the way the river 
was forty miles wide. 



208 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXXVIII. 

PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONS AMONG THE FREEDMEN. 

Atlanta, Ga., May 30, 1882. 
I HAVE visited some of the Presbyterian schools and 
churches. At Chester, S. C, I found my seminary class- 
mate. Rev. Samuel Loomis. Ten years ago he came down 
there and took things in chaos, and it is strange that he 
has created so much out of it. He has developed his 
Brainard Institute, and around it in the country nine 
Presbyterian churches using as ministers for the same, 
young men who have been trained in his school, and him- 
self serving as bishop. In Chester and the three adjoin- 
ing counties there is a colored population of about forty 
thousand. Last year he reported two hundred and sixty- 
nine scholars in his institute. He has bought a fine piece 
of land and is about to start an industrial department, 
intending to furnish milk, eggs, and vegetables for the 
local market. He has commanded the respect of the 
best citizens. He has a normal institute whose members 
pledge themselves to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, 
tobacco, and profane and vulgar language. His churches 
bear such names as Hermon, Salem, Olivet, Tabor, 
Carmel, Hebron, Bethlehem. His son, Leverett M. 
Loomis (in addition to his duties as teacher), from sport- 
ing with a gun for health, is putting the science of 
ornithology under obligation to him in a work which he 
is preparing, " The Birds of South Carolina and the South 
Atlantic Coast." Rev. William Richardson, at Winns- 
boro', of the same state, in his Fairfield Institute, enrolls 
over three hundred scholars, and has the oversight of five 
churches. At Charleston I found the Wallingford Acad- 
emy doing a good work. 



IN THE SOUTH. 209 

I was glad to visit the principal Presbyterian institu- 
tion for the colored people, Biddle University, at Char- 
lotte, N. C. My childhood's playmate, now Rev. Dr. 
John H. Shedd, had been a professor there several years, 
between his former and his present service in the 
Nestorian Mission. Rev. Dr. S. Mattoon, who to twenty 
years of mission work in India is yet, we hope, to add 
many in this line of home missionary service, is the 
president and the professor of theology, church history 
and government. The catalogue reports eight theolo- 
gians, twenty-one collegians, nineteen preps, and over 
one hundred academics. 

The religious work of Biddle appears in a whole pres- 
bytery of thirty churches, raised up in the region round 
about. The professors go out and organize and take the 
supervision of the young preachers, whom they train and 
send along to supply the churches. Dr. Mattoon admin- 
istered the ordinances of fourteen churches on fourteen 
successive Sundays, running out on Saturday and back 
in time for the routine of teaching during the week. 

Western North Carolina furnishes a congenial soil for 
such church planting. In ante-bellum times it was a 
region of Presbyterianism and Unionism. After the war 
the colored members were disposed to come off by them- 
selves and organize separately. Along this Piedmont 
belt. reconstruction has gone on more rapidly than in the 
low country. The smaller plantations could be more 
readily adapted to the free-labor system. Then the 
farmers themselves were accustomed to work as the big 
planters were not. The colored people, too, of this region, 
accustomed to work by the side of the master and his sons, 
came thereby into contact with more civilization than 
did those of the great plantations, who were worked by 



2IO PILGRLWS LETTERS. 

overseers, and so are found, in general, a better material for 
the school and church process. And then theology does 
tell, even upon such masses of low-down people. A while 
ago the ladies of the Ladies' Missionary Society of the 
Presbyterian church in Charlotte were regretting that they 
could not have the presence of a live missionary in their 
meeting to awaken more interest among them. But at 
that same time there were in their city these two returned 
missionaries. Rev. Doctors Mattoon and Shedd, who 
could have poured ever so much light upon their meet- 
ings. They were not thought of, or, if thought of, they 
belonged to an ostracized class. If they had come from 
Africa they would not only have been treated with 
courtesy, but would have been honored by these same 
good ladies. Dr. Shedd has now gone back to that semi- 
enlightened country where his family, as with all mission- 
aries abroad, will have the elite of foreign residents for 
their friends, and where their society will be courted. It 
was pitiable to hear that in one of those old-time Presby- 
terian pulpits the divinity of slavery was yet maintained, 
the pastor having bemoaned the depravity of the times that 
had overthrown one of God's institutions — the domestic 
— and was going on to serve others the same way. 
Let us learn the true cause of the overthrow of slavery. 
That subject was discussed by the opening sermon of the 
presbytery in Wilmington, N. C, during the last year, 
as reported to me by a northern minister who was present. 
The cause, according to this preacher, was the idolizing 
of the institution. To prove this he cited that the people 
hereabout kept their slaves at home and sent their sons 
into the war to be slaughtered, and the fact that they 
gave up all their money to save slavery. God must take 
away all idols ! The Thanksgiving sermon last fall in 



IN THE SOUTH. 211 

another Presbyterian pulpit, the leading one of a southern 
city, as reported to me by a northern minister that heard 
it, declared it as one occasion of gratitude that it was 
as well with them as it was; "for," said he, "history 
does not give us another case where the rebels were not 
either hanged or banished. We did not suffer in either of 
those ways. We thank God for that. This is now our 
country. We ought to make it an enlightened country, 
one that we can love, one in which God shall be honored 
and obeyed." 



LETTER LXXIX. 

NORTH AND SOUTH. — SOME THINGS IN COMMON. 

Clifton Springs, N. Y., July i, 1882. 

1. One common possession is that of our English 
inheritance. We are of the Anglo-Saxon stock. We 
speak the English language. We have the common 
inheritance of the principles of constitutional govern- 
ment, of trial by jury, of habeas corpus, and of civil and 
religious liberty. We are joint heirs to the matchless 
English literature, and to a history that has made England 
the leading nation of Christendom. 

2. We have had a common share in the domination, 
physical and political, of this country. Of the two com- 
panies chartered by James the First in 1606, the London, 
at Jamestown, was a success ; the Plymouth, at the mouth 
of the Kennebec, was a failure, which the coming of the 
Puritans and the Pilgrims retrieved. In the subduing 
of successive territories there has been a constant inter- 
blending of stock. All my life I have known of this 
mixture in the interior and the western states. And now 



2 12 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

as I am traveling every-whither in Dixie I am surprised 
to find how much it has of northern blood, how much of 
its business, how much of its enterprise. 

3. We hold in common the glories of our revolutionary 
period. We share in the joys of the birth of a nation. 
We have the same traditions of patriotism. We have a 
mutual pride in Washington, Jefferson, and the Adamses, 
and in all the other fathers of the republic. Our national 
centennial gave occasion for the revival of this national 
feeling. Masses of our brethren who had become es- 
tranged were glad of the opportunity to share in the 
thrill inspired by the world's recognition of our country's 
greatness. Charleston has had her patriotic centennial 
celebration. The streets of Savannah were ablaze with 
loyal bunting at the celebration of the Jasper Memorial. 
Thousands of people met at King's Mountain, in North 
Carolina, to honor the revolutionary battle fought at that 
place. The Cowpens, in South Carolina, afforded another 
such occasion January 17, 1881, and, in the October 
following, all the country came to Yorktown to glorify 
the great consummation. 

4. We share in the essentials of the reformed church 
life. The Pilgrims and the Puritans did their work from 
New England westward. Much of the blood by which 
the southern states were stocked was of the reformed 
quality. The Presbyterians were Puritans. The Scotch 
had a large share of this leavening. The Scotch and the 
Scotch-Irish element in this region has been large and 
largely influential. I am surprised to find how much of 
the Covenanter stock has been tucked away into the 
mountain and the hill country of the south. The Hugue- 
nots, who were the contribution of France to the Refor- 
mation, have had a large representation in the south. 



IN THE SOUTH. 213 

Sixty years before the Pilgrims had landed, they had made 
two settlements on the coast of South Carolina which 
were annihilated by the persecuting power that followed 
them to the wilderness continent. They tried again and 
made a lodgment where Charleston now is, and there to 
this day the "Huguenot Church" abides in the integrity 
of character and worship. Out in the state, and in other 
places in the south, the Huguenots have given names 
to the leading families and towns, and tone and caste to 
society. The south has had but a small portion of foreign 
immigration, and so has felt less the influence of the 
continental views as to the Sabbath, so that the holy day 
seems to be more strictly observed here than at the north. 
The orthodoxy of the south is well known. It has had 
less activity in theological discussion, and so abides more 
in the old forms of doctrinal statement — so much so that 
the people are hungering for a more ethical and spiritual 
preaching. In the coming conflict with infidelity this 
theological soundness may be the late coming of Bliicher 
to our Waterloo. 

5. We have a common sympathy in Protestantism. The 
early French and Spanish occupation of Louisiana and 
in some cities of the other states has made them strong 
Catholic centers. But Romanism is not so generally a 
prevailing power in the south as in the north. The drift 
of later foreign immigration has made this difference. 
Rome's chance at the south is now not with foreigners, 
but with natives, the Africo-Americans, and she will 
make the most of that. But just here comes in our 
Mnity of Protestant views. Southern Christians are 
anxious lest the display and the mystery of the Romish 
system should captivate these simple children of nature. 
They are as anxious as the people of the north that the 



2 14 



PIL GRIM ' S LET TEKS. 



same providence which delivered our land from the early 
domination of Catholic nationalities may save it from 
again coming under the supremacy of that spiritual 
despotism. 



LETTER LXXX. 

DEDICATION OF LIVINGSTONE HALL. 

Nashville, Tenn., October 31, 1882. 

From the annual meeting at Cleveland there came 
down to this city, as a delegation to participate in this 
service, Rev. Doctors Strieby, Pike, O. H. White, Roy, 
and A. G. Haygood, secretary of the Slater Fund, Prof. 
C. C. Painter, President Ware, General C. B. Fisk, and 
directly from New Haven, Prof. Cyrus Northrop, to make 
the dedicatory address. Many local celebrities were 
present. Bishop Cain, of the African Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, led in the opening devotions. The Mozart 
Society, made up of students and led by Prof. A. K. 
Spence, rendered the Hallelujah Chorus and other classi- 
cal music, while Ella Shepherd, of the Jubilee Singers, 
aided in rendering some of the wonders of song. President 
Cravath made the historic statement, by which it appeared 
that sixty thousand dollars had been given by Mrs. Stone 
for the erection of a hall which was to be named after 
Mr. Livingstone. Bishop McTyeire, of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church South, extended welcome and con- 
gratulation to the educators and philanthropists who had 
come from afar, and greetings in the name of thousands 
who are to be benefited, to the elect lady by whose 
wisdom and bounty this elegant hall had been built. 

The president, introducing Professor Northrop, said that 



LV THE SOUTH. 215 

he represented an institution whose next commence- 
ment would be the one hundred and eighty-second, while 
the next of Fisk would be the seventeenth. Of the pro 
fessor's oratory it can be said that it is like the song of 
a canary — it just sings itself. Such an example of 
chaste English, of masculine thought, of fervid eloquence, 
was a good object-lesson for Yale to set before the 
colleges for both races represented on this occasion. 
The professor urged that the nation must take hold of 
the national problem of education at the south. It was 
a masterly argument on that line. Yet for the higher 
education he said we must turn away from the state to 
personal beneficence. The American Missionary Associa- 
tion illustrates this. A society that has been able to call 
into existence and to develop to their present propor- 
tions such institutions as Fisk, Atlanta, Straight, Tal- 
ladega, Berea, and Hampton, may view its own work 
with the highest satisfaction, for it has demonstrated the 
power of organized Christian charity to supply schools 
for the higher education, when all other forces had failed. 
Dr. Haygood rejoiced in the Livingstone Hall and reported 
$61,000,000 as given the last decade for education. As a 
boy he had been more thrilled with admiration for Liv- 
ingstone than for any other man. This hall was a grander 
memorial than his tablet in Westminster. General Fisk 
in glowing strains sought to stimulate young men by the 
example of Livingstone, the weaver's son ; and the young 
women, by that of the frugality and the beneficence of 
Mrs. Stone. It was fitting that to Secretary Strieby 
should fall the part of offering the finished structure to 
the Lord in dedicatory prayer, which in its grasp and 
glow seemed almost the words of an inspired prophet. 



2l6 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER LXXXI. 

WORK OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCHES AMONG THE 
NEGROES. 

Atlanta, Ga., November lo, 1882. 
It is one of the encouraging things as to moral recon- 
struction at the south that the old churches are beginning 
to take hold of the gospel work among the colored people. 
They find that they had made a mistake in letting go of 
them. The Episcopal Conference in Virginia this fall 
discussed the subject. The Southern Presbyterian Gen- 
eral Assembly started a few years ago an institution at 
Tuscaloosa, Ala., for the training of colored ministers. 
I have visited the school. In a small way it is doing 
good work. Here and there we find a colored church of 
that connection. Atlanta has one under the care of 
Atlanta Presbytery, which raised the money for the 
church edifice, recently dedicated. It has an educated 
pastor from the Lincoln University. The Methodist 
Episcopal Church South has set off its colored members 
as "the colored Methodist Episcopal Church of Amer- 
ica," giving them all the church property they had in use. 
Its General Conference iias recently set to work to plant 
an institute for colored preachers at Augusta. One 
southern man has given twenty-five thousand dollars 
toward the enterprise, and the conference is pushing the 
endowment. 



PERIOD X. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1883-84. 

Miss Willard in the South. — Secretary Dunning. — The New Bir- 
mingham. — Canon Farrar. — Concord Council. — Mountain Work. 
— Wesleyans and German Reformed in North Carolina. — The 
Georgia Association in Charleston, S. C. 



LETTER LXXXII. 

MISS WILLARD AND TEMPERANCE WORK IN THE SOUTH. 

Atlanta, Ga., January 15, 1883. 
The " Women's Crusade " was a burst of agony that 
could be endured in silence no longer. That movement 
has not died out ; it has only changed its form. That 
impulse has been transformed into principle ; that spasm 
of action, into a settled organism, instinct with life, 
tremulous with power — "The National Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union." It has spread over thirty- 
eight states and territories of the nation. It has its 
own Thirty-nine Articles, or departments of work. It 
is moving upon all legislatures to secure the legal require- 
ment of temperance instruction in the schools. And 
the impersonation of this uprising is Miss Frances E. 
Willard, an orator, with womanly grace ; an organizer 
of the Napoleonic pattern ; a lecturing tourist, at a touch 
of whose genius state after state falls into line across to 
the Golden Gate and down to the Gulf. May the Lord 
make her our Miriam, our Deborah, to sing the song of 



2l8 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

triumph over the Pharaoh, the Jabin of the liquor 
despotism. 

She has just been organizing the Georgia Union, auxil- 
iary to the National. Her great speech was on " Personal 
Liberty." Rev. Dr. C. A. Evans, pastor of the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church South, and ex-confederate 
general, remarked to me his great delight with that 
address. When she first came to this city, two years ago, 
at a large Sunday night union service, Governor Colquitt 
followed her address with a hearty endorsement, saying 
that it was well known that the south, even the southern 
Methodists, had been very conservative upon the matter 
of woman's appearing upon the platform ; and then in 
his gushing way he pronounced a benison upon her. Last 
fall, coming south, I fell in at Louisville upon the annual 
meeting of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 
It was a glorious sight. A large church filled with noble 
women was a-flutter with silken Stars and Stripes ; and 
almost every state in the Union was represented by its 
delegation seated together, with its name emblazoned 
across its great patriotic shield. And so this blessed 
cause is helping to grow over the ugly gash cut into the 
tree of our national life. I counted it an honor to be 
invited to address that body. 

A year ago I found the Lone Star state surrendering to 
this lone woman. Like a true conqueror, she had her 
campaign well laid out. At Little Rock, Ark., falling into 
her line of advance, I found her printed scheme for Texas. 
It had appointments for every day in February except 
two, and those were scattered all over that whilom repub- 
lic so as to take in the principal cities, and so necessitating 
night and day travel over these green roads, rough as cor- 
duroy by the recent floods. Politicians on the stump 



LV THE SOUTH. 



219 



rarely accomplish a greater feat of canvassing. So runs 
the list : Marshall, Jefferson, Clarkville, Paris, Sherman, 
Dennison, McKinney, Dallas, Fort Worth, Cleburne, 
Wacco, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston ■ and 
there are two appointments for each place, with three in 
several. Following her at Paris, Dennison, and Austin, 
and overtaking her at San Antonio, I have had opportu- 
nity to observe the impression left behind. At every 
place she is spoken of in the highest terms. The secular 
papers advertise her fully and report her fairly with much 
;jraise. She is entertained by the best of families. She 
secures union meetings. She is attended by her secretary, 
Miss Gordon, of Boston, who also takes a hand in the 
addresses, burning alcohol in her talks to children. Miss 
Willard's influence is not that of a stray shower ; but, 
organizing as she goes along, it is that of new fountains. 
It is to be hoped that these will be such as is that of the 
river San Antonio, which at the city of that name, where 
I overtook her, bursts forth from the rock a very torrent, 
watering the city, irrigating the plain around, and turning 
mills. Nor was that campaign enough to satisfy this fair 
conqueror. From Galveston she leaped across the Gulf 
into New Orleans, and thence marched up through Missis- 
sippi, Alabama, and Georgia. 

Miss Willard is true to the colored people. In our city 
she visited and addressed the students of Atlanta Univer- 
sity. The foremost lady of Savannah, who entertained 
her, imbibing the spirit of her leader and becoming the 
head of the local union, visited our colored church there 
to inspire their temperance meeting by her presence, prof- 
fering the pastor all helpful cooperation. Precisely this 
was the process at Chai;leston. At Paris, Texas, our 
pastor's wife, the president of the colored Woman's Chris- 



220 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

tian Temperance Union, handed me an autograph letter 
which Miss Willard had sent her, regretting that a wash- 
out had prevented her from going to speak to them. At 
Austin she addressed the colored people. At Little Rock 
her work must have done not a little to confirm the people 
of the fifth ward of that city, which alone of all its wards 
had voted local option and had put out of its portion of 
the municipality every one of the several saloons. And 
the great majority of the voters in that ward are colored 
people. 1 

LETTER LXXXIII. 

THE NEW BIRMINGHAM. — ALABAMA ANNIVERSARIES. 

SECRETARY DUNNING. CANON FARRAR. 

Birmingham, Ala., February 12, 1883. 
Rarely is a new-world town more true to the idea of its 
old-world namesake than this. Here is a nice city of iron 
and coal and of iron-works and cotton factories. Twelve 
years ago it was a gullied red-clay farm ; now it is a place 
of eleven thousand people, with its magnificent court- 
house, its system of water-supply of two million gallons 
from a reservoir on the mountain, its sewers going in, 
its telephone exchange, its fire department, its gas lamps, 
and its telegraph business of eight thousand dollars per 
annum. The town lies in a valley that is four miles 
wide. In the mountain on the west is the coal in five-foot 
seams, in the eastern range is iron, and both are of inex- 
haustible supply. Here are five iron furnaces that employ 
fifteen hundred men and turn out five hundred tons of pig- 

* Texas, in July, 1887, voted on an amendment jo the constitution, and defeated it by a 
majority of seventy-five thousand. But the temperance people, nothing daunted, are renew- 
ing the contest, and will yet carry it. 



IN THE SOUTH. 22 1 

iron a day. Here is a rolling-mill that works four hundred 
and fifty men with twenty-four puddling furnaces. Then 
a half-dozen iron-works for the manufacture of engines, 
boilers, and all sorts of machinery. Then three or four 
companies for mining coal and iron. The Louisville & 
Nashville has here general shops that employ one thousand 
men. Then come the planing-mills, flouring-mills, brick 
machines, furniture factories, two banks, and one hundred 
and fifty mercantile houses. One cotton-mill is already 
running, and another is projected with a northern capital 
of a quarter of a million. Here is the crossing of the 
two great trunk lines of railway, the Louisville & Nashville, 
reaching on by way of Montgomery and Mobile, and the 
Alabama Great Southern, which is a link in the Cincinnati 
Southern, which, branching at Meridian, runs on to New 
Orleans and by Vicksburg on to Texas. Then the Georgia 
Pacific from Atlanta crosses here, going on to the Missis- 
sippi. 

Nor is there a neglect in the educational line. Public 
schools for the colored as well as for the white are run 
nine months in the year. Three of the Talladega students 
are teaching the colored youth. The several denomina- 
tions are represented here by their churches, the last to be 
set up being the Congregational. Canon Farrar thinks 
that the last chapter of Paul's letter to the church at Rome 
does not belong to that Epistle, but rather to the one sent 
to the Ephesians, because, as he says, " It is strange that 
Saint Paul should salute twenty-six people in a church which 
he had never visited, and address them in terms of pecu- 
liar intimacy and affection, when he salutes only one or 
two in churches which he had founded." If the queen's 
chaplain had only been a home missionary superintendent, 
he could see very well how the apostle should send saluta- 



2 22 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

tions to SO many of the dear Christian friends of the 
several churches which he had organized, who by their 
enterprise had rushed into that Roman capital. I was 
surprised to find, upon my first visit to this wide-awake 
western-like town, that all the Congregational people there, 
whom I had already known and loved, had come in from 
our several churches and schools in Alabama as mechanics 
of a half-dozen different trades to build up their own for- 
tunes along with that of the new city. The young Talla- 
dega pastor on his first day found a dozen of his old 
friends. So that either of us in a previous apostohc letter 
might have made out a list of the names of those to be 
saluted almost equal to that of the great apostle who 
wrote to his old friends then settled at Rome. 

Talladega, March 23, 1883. 
The Alabama anniversaries have just been held in this 
place. It was a revelation to these southern Congrega- 
tionalists that there was such a Sunday-School Society as 
that one in Boston, and that it had such a wide-awake 
Secretary as Rev. A. E. Dunning has proved himself to be, 
the first Secretary who had ever come down to attend an 
association in Dixie. He preached the opening sermon of 
the Sunday-school convention, rousing us by his apostolic 
fervor. He nourished the Sunday-school by his words. 
He was given Sunday evening to set forth the blessed 
work proposed by his Society. As it was Easter Sunday, 
at the morning service he was greatly delighted with 
a spontaneous real negro spiritual appropriate to the 
occasion. It was this: — 

Dust, dust an' ashes fly over on my grave, 
Dust, dust an' ashes fly over on my grave, 
An' de Lord shall bear my spirit home, 
An' de Lord shall bea.- my spirit home. 



IN THE SOUTH. 223 

Dey crucified my Saviour, an' nailed him to the cross, 
Dey crucified my Saviour, an' nailed him to the cross. 
An' de Lord shall bear my spirit home. 
An' de Lord shall bear my spirit home. 

He rose, he rose, he rose from the dead, 
He rose, he rose, he rose from the dead, 
An' de Lord shall bear my spirit home. 
An' de Lord shall bear my spirit home. 

On the last night we ordained by council a young man 
of this college. He traced his conversion to a couple of 
the early lady workers here, and paid a high tribute to 
his Presbyterian mistress, who had taught her colored 
children to read, had made them learn the catechism, 
had kept them steadily at church and Sunday-school, 
and was so particular about their keeping the Sabbath 
that upon their getting home from church, she would 
change their Sunday rig for linsey-woolsey so that they 
would be ashamed to appear on the streets. With up- 
lifted eye and faltering voice, he said that he believed 
that if there was a good woman in heaven, it was she. 
I have heard his brother tell the same story and then 
go on reeling off the catechism until I said, That is 
enough. 



LETTER LXXXIV. 

THE CONCORD NATIONAL COUNCIL. [TS BREADTH IN 

TERRITORY AND IN RACES REPRESENTED. 

Concord, N. H., October 15, 1883. 

It was a congress of an ocean-bound ecclesiastical 

republic. Its delegates came from the Aroostook of the 

north-east and from Puget Sound of the far north-west ; 

from the Red River of the north and from the Gulf of the 



224 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



south. The veteran from the new north-west, whose for- 
eign mission field had turned into one of the home-mission 
sort, had found his first leisure after a service of forty-five 
years to return to the states, and that only because the 
Northern Pacific had reached him in time to bring him 
back over the Rocky Mountains. The city of the Golden 
Gate from her back door had sent a silver-tongued pastor 
across the continent. The deep interior joined hands 
with the solid east. The south, from New Orleans to 
the federal capital, was there in right hearty allegiance. 
The germ of this system, which for a long time rested in 
the conservatory spot of New England, has now spread 
"throughout the mainland from sea to sea." As a tide 
rising above its native metes and bounds, it first crept up 
along all the Presbyterian creeks and coves until, flushing 
them, it overflowed into its broad expanse. So far as de- 
nominational interest is concerned, it did seem that these 
were the Lord's foolish people thus to pour so much of their 
Puritan blood into other ecclesiastical veins ; but as relates 
to a grand Christian development, the turning of this life 
current of New England ideas and theology into the 
stream of the national life has been a wondrous gain. 
He that will lose his life shall save it. The New England 
zone is now broadening itself out over the south. My 
fellow-townsman at Atlanta, Ga., Senator Joseph E. 
Brown, says that Yale and Harvard are molding the whole 
country now. By these two institutions he means the 
principles which they and all other such represent. An 
ex-confederate officer chided me because we of the north- 
west did not fall in with the south. I confessed that we 
of that region had felt not a little of sympathy with them, 
because we, too, had been subjugated by those same Yan- 
kees, only that we were vanquished by their ideas and they 



IN THE SOUTH. 



225 



by their bayonets. And now, Colonel, said I, you will 
have to take their ideas too. 

Of the five races of the human family, this council rep- 
resented four of them : the Caucasian, the Mongolian, 
the African, the American. The white race was conspicu- 
ous. The Mongolian, of the Pacific slope, with its nine- 
teen schools, its forty teachers, its two thousand eight 
hundred and eighty-three scholars, and with its five or 
six hundred who have turned from Confucius to Christ, 
stood there in the person of its California substitute. 
For the American, stood up his missionary from Fort 
Berthold, on the Upper Missouri. The African race had 
three of her sons upon that floor, educated Christian min- 
isters, who were welcomed to their seats, and whose voice 
in speech and prayer and song was joyfully heard. The 
people of the more favored race seemed to look upon those 
of the other three not as wards of charity, but as brothers 
in the one family whose Father is the Creator of all. And 
the Association, which by the Congregational churches 
had been put in trust with the spiritual welfare of these 
three depressed families that dwell within our borders, 
stood there to give account of its stewardship and to be 
cheered, in the renewal of its Christly work, with a hearty 
"Well done." In the enjoyment of such a fellowship how 
does all manifestation of the caste spirit stand out as a 
censure upon the Creator and a libel upon our common 
humanity ! And how does this gathering of messengers 
of the churches of like faith and polity and of these four 
race affinities from the length and breadth of the continent 
for fellowship in doctrine, work, and experience, confirm 
the wisdom and necessity of this National Council as a 
bond of union and as an instrumentality for propagating 
the kingdom of God in our country and throughout the 
world. 



2 26 PILGRIM'S LETTERS, 

LETTER LXXXV. 

MOUNTAIN WORK. 

Williamsburg, Ky., March 20, 1884. 

This place is the center of the new series of missionary 
operations in the mountains of Kentucky. It is the old- 
time county seat of Whitley County, on the Cumberland 
River, in the south-east part of the state. The country is 
healthful and abounds in coal and the best of hard woods, 
and is good for fruit and farming. When I first came here 
I found at one mill eight million feet of seasoned walnut, 
and at another six million feet, waiting for the coming of 
the railway to carry it off. The logs are floated down 
from all the affluents above. The little sleepy old town 
has waked up from its doze of seventy years, during which 
time it had not built a meeting-house, and is now putting 
on the thrift of a western town. Two years ago Rev. A. 
A. Myers came in from Michigan, finding not a northern 
man here ; but, going to work, he gathered a church, and 
then got under way a project for a " church house." Going 
ahead, and saying, " Come on, boys ! " he led the people 
in getting the stone for the foundation and the logs for 
the lumber. And we now find a beautiful sanctuary, ac- 
knowledged to be the best in the mountains, thirty-two by 
fifty feet, with a tower, stained-glass windows, and interior 
finishing to match, costing in all $3,025, and not a dollar 
of this came from the north. 

Meantime the Williamsburg Academy had come along. 
The time had come for the dedication of the twin institu- 
tions, and so on the last Sabbath and Monday they were 
duly set apart for their Christian uses. President Fair- 
child and Professor Dodge, of Berea, and Rev. Doctors W. 



IN THE SOUTH. 



22 7 



H. Ward and James Powell, of New York, and the superin- 
tendent, were here to join in the solemnities. Wishing to 
extend the influence of our metropolitan visitors and to 
make them somewhat acquainted with this mountain 
scheme, we had planned for them a series of meetings 
in three or four places where our work is taking hold. So 
we had them roughing it at Woodbine and Barbourville 
and Pleasant View and Jellico, closing with a rousing ser- 
vice in the colored church in Knoxville. 

With great enthusiasm Mr. Myers espoused the temper- 
ance cause, and now the public sale of liquor has been 
driven out of the county. He has also built, or has under 
plan, five other edifices, which are to be used for church and 
high school purposes. Three are along the new line of 
the Louisville & Nashville road to Knoxville. It is now 
clearer than ever before that the solution of this mountain 
evangelization as to method is in the union of the church 
and school process. This will develop character that will 
stand. If it were not for the color question ^ we could 
soon capture and captivate the people of these mountains ; 
and I suppose the same might have been said of the Saviour 
and the mountain people of his land. Yet He chose the 
slower and surer principle and process. Our organic tes- 
timony in these anti-caste institutions is of more impor- 
tance than the securing of a much larger area of native 
mind for a training that leaves out the brotherhood of 
man in Jesus Christ.^ 

1 One year later three or four colored young people came in, whereupon there 
was a stampede, by which the number of pupils was brought down from one hun- 
dred and twenty to forty. The academy went steadily along. Gradually the schol- 
ars worked back, and now for the year ending June, 1886, the catalogue enrolls two 
hundred and twenty scholars. 

2 On six consecutive days in December, 1887, six meeting-houses were dedicated 
on this field along the line of a new railroad opened, those of South Williamsburg, 
Pleasant View, Jellico, Rockhold, Woodbine, and Corbin. One young man of the 



2 28 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER LXXXVI. 

MORE MOUNTAIN WORK. 

Grand View, Tenn., June i8, 1884. 
And it is a "grand view," indeed. I first came to it 
last March. Leaving the rail at Sparta, on the west side 
of the Cumberland Plateau, I had climbed and crossed it 
for a distance of fifty-six miles. Through deep mud, thrice 
dipping water in our buggy at the fording of swollen 
streams, and thrice replacing small bridges before they 
could be crossed, and climbing up and down the rocky 
mountain roads, at the end of a dark and raw day we came 
to turn in at the house of Squire Abbott for the night, 
knowing nothing of the view round about. Stepping out 
in the bright morning upon the upper veranda, the tran- 
scendent vision opens on me as a surprise. I am on the 
crest of the Waldron's Ridge, eight hundred feet above 
the five-mile-wide Tennessee Valley below. I take in a 
bird's-eye view of the best farms of the state. I see the 
trains of the Cincinnati Southern running up and down 
their track in the valley, their plumes of steam falling far 

mountains was also ordained by council during that campaign. The local churches 
and the ministers, Superintendent Myers and Pastor Jenkins, were assisted by Rev- 
erends C. J. Ryder, A. F. Beard, D.D., G. S. Pope, S. E. Lathrop, and Joseph E. 
Roy. And just about that time a fine building for church and academic purposes 
was dedicated at Pleasant Hill in the mountains of east Tennessee. The church 
dedicated at Rockhold was within a stone's-throw of the old farm-house where 
Rev. J. C. Richardson, in 1857, had been seized and bound by the postmaster, 
Charles Rockhold, and his two sons, and was called The Richardson Memorial 
Church, the bell within its tower having been procured by the widow of that mis- 
sionary among friends at Perry Center, N. Y. Such is the revenge of love. The 
only person remaining in the neighborhood to bear the name of Rockhold is Green 
Rockhold, who had been the only slave of the family, and who was the only man in 
the neighborhood to speak a word of approbation to the Elliots for delivering the 
missionary ; while the three Elliot brothers and their families remain to be influ- 
ential members in the new Congregational church and society. 



IN THE SOUTH. 229 

behind before we hear the report of the signal. I see the 
little narrow gauge at my feet, climbing up the face of the 
Ridge. I take in the course of the river in its windings, 
traced by the fog hanging over it and shimmering in the 
sun, a veritable river in the air, with a pillar of smoke 
streaming above from the occasional passing steamer. In 
the distant east, over a series of smaller mountains, called 
the "wash-board," I see rising on the horizon the lofty 
ranges over in the Carolinas ; and down fifty miles to 
Chattanooga I find the Lookout Mountain looming up 
in view. 

At the site of that historic city by the Tennessee River, 
that mountain is cleft asunder from Waldron's Ridge, 
which runs on up in its almost perpendicular front for 
seventy miles, to the gap that nature made for the pas- 
sage of the Emery River and the great railroad which the 
Queen City drops down to the Crescent City for a bind- 
ing of the Union. Singularly the great plateau at its 
lower end for fifty miles is divided in the middle for the 
beautiful Sequatchee Valley, whose river-head is in Grassy 
Cove, a bowl of three by four miles, dropped down into the 
mountain surface, the Sequatchee literally finding its way 
out by running under the mountain for several miles to 
the head of the valley. All this country, covered with 
timber, is underlaid with coal and iron. This narrow 
gauge climbs up the face of these southern palisades to 
get over in back to such mines with the intent of crossing 
the plateau. At Dayton, Rockwood, and other such places 
on the railroad in the valley, the flaming furnaces are 
bringing together the fuel and the ore. Fruit is the 
specialty of this region. The plateau falls to the era 
of sandstone. Its soil is thin and poor, but, taken in its 
pristine state and treated fairly as to fertilization and rota- 



!30 



PIL GRIM'S LET TERS. 



tion of crops, it does well in the cereals and in the grasses ; 
so that with the extended mountain range it excels in the 
raising of stock, cattle, hogs, and sheep. Valley farmers 
drive their herds up here to be fattened through the sum- 
mer under the care of herdsmen. But the principal com- 
modity seems to be health. The common saying is : 
"Our country is poor, but it is healthy." Since the war 
northern people have been sifting themselves in here, and 
also sifting themselves out. At Grand View thirty north- 
ern families have made their homes, the most of them for 
the benefit secured from the climate. In Texas the first 
question asked of a newcomer is : " What did you do .'' " 
or, "What was your name before you came here.-*" The 
natural query here as to a newcomer is : " What was the 
matter with you .^ " The native citizens round about and 
back in the mountains get on well with the Yankees. An 
academy has been taken hold of here.^ 

And so at Sherwood among the mountains of this state 
on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, fifty miles north 
of the latter city, another academy and church are under 
way. The town was named for ex-Lieutenant-Governor 
Sherwood, of Minnesota, who settled there himself 
with a colony largely by way of that state from New 
England. Then Scott County, lying upon the Cumber- 
land Plateau, where the Cincinnati Southern crosses, has 
loomed up into a missionary prominence that has secured 
for it the sobriquet, "The state of Scott." The six sta- 
tions of the railway within its borders have all been 
occupied by Sunday-school, preaching, and temperance 
operations, and this is only a base line of a movement into 

1 Rev. C. B. Riggs, a nephew of Dr. Riggs, of Constantinople, is now in charge 
of the academy, which has come on to have one hundred and twenty-six students, 
and of the church which he has organized — the whole a beautiful specimen of 
what may be done and ought to be done more and more in these mountains. 



IN THE SOUTH. 



231 



the regions beyond. Whereas there had formerly been in 
the county twenty-seven saloons to two Sunday-schools, 
now there are twenty-five Sunday-schools to two saloons. 
The Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 
which in more distant parts of the south has cooperated 
with the American Missionary Association in furnishing 
Sunday-school literature, has been doing the same in 
Scott, sending also a colporter for two or three months 
and detailing Secretary Dunning for a special visit. The 
headquarters of that work are at Robbins, whose resident 
proprietor. Captain A. J. C. Robbins, as a contractor, had 
built the three hundred thousand dollar tunnel near by 
bearing his name, and who, from having been one of John 
Morgan's thieves and an unbeliever, is now in the office of 
a deacon, to which I had the pleasure of ordaining him, 
as loyal to his country, now, as he is to his church. The 
following letter which Dr. Dunning received from him is 
as true as it is characteristic : ^ 

Up to last fall I was a " heathen and an infidel," or rather, made no 
profession of religion. Having been for seventeen years a rough rail- 
road contractor, and all my associations of the rougher kind, I took 
little thought about religion ; and it was only on one or two of my trips 
home, when my little daughter Ernie took me to the "new Sunday- 
school," that I commenced thinking about it. I professed religion in 
September last ; and now we have a little church organization of seven- 
teen members, and I am a deacon in the church and superintendent of 
the Sunday-school. The church is Congregational in its belief. So 
you see we are progressing. Much interest is manifested here, and our 
Sunday-school is on a firm basis. 

No, I do not shrink from Christ, but glory in him and know that he 
is my dearest, best friend. God is good to us ; and you can not realize 

2 The county has now three Congregational churches. It has had the ministerial 
services of Mr. Rufus Taft and of Rev. W. E. Barton, And now Rev. G. Stanley 
Pope, many years at the head of Tougaloo University, Mississippi, is located on 
that field as superintendent ; his familiarity with southern people and his genius for 
work will make him a greatly effective man in those mountains. 



232 ■ PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

how much we all thank you and your people for the kmd interest you 
have taken in us. 

We have just started'a ten months' school. It is the first one ever 
started, to run that long at a time, in the history of Scott County. 
Still there are so many here who can not read or write, and who know 
not that Jesus is the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. It makes 
one sick at heart to see how it is. But light is breaking from the east, 
and I hope the time will soon come when we will be enjoying the " per- 
fect day." 

The old stage-road from Louisville to Nashville crossed 
the plateau above this point. On my first trip passing 
over that stage line I was entertained in two ancient 
houses which had been stage stands, both of which, as 
the tradition goes, General Jackson had honored as a 
guest. In the diversion of travel by railways the four- 
horse stage has gone down to be the great United States 
buck-board, which is apt to break down and be exchanged 
for the dashing mail-boys on horseback, who cross over 
the plateau every day both ways. Along this line on the 
central portion of the plateau are the villages. Pleasant 
Hill, Pomona, Howard Springs, Crosville, and Northville. 
And this line has been taken up for schools and churches. 
At Pleasant Hill, Rev. Benjamin Dodge has an academy 
and a church ; and at Pomona, a church. It is wonderful 
how he is getting hold of the people. It is all by his 
making himself one of them in sympathy and interest. 



IN THE SOUTH. 233 



LETTER LXXXVII. 

THE WESLEYANS AND THE GERMAN REFORMED IN NORTH 

CAROLINA. 

Salisbury, N. C, September 15, 1884. 
Working along back from New York to Atlanta I drop 
off and inquire for the Salisbury Prison, and learn that 
when the Yankees came in here they burned down the 
old ware-house which had served that purpose, and that 
the site of the old pen had been built over. So disappear 
the material signs of that contest, but not the wounds 
of hearts and homes. I find in this west end of the old 
north state the remnant of a Wesleyan Methodist con- 
ference, for whose people, before and since the war, 
nothing has been done in any special way for education. 
Before the war, as will be remembered by old abolition- 
ists. Rev. Daniel Worth, a native of the state and in it 
at one time a justice of the peace, engaged in preaching 
under the American Missionary Association, was arrested 
and thrown into prison at Greensboro', out of which he 
was brought only by the raising among the friends at 
the north of three thousand dollars to cover his bonds. 
He had eight little churches. The bitterness of feeling 
then engendered against him and his people still abides, 
so that these Wesleyans are yet called " nigger equal- 
izers." In that early day one of the preachers was seized 
by the throat in the pulpit and hurried off to prison. 
Other deeds of violence have been suffered by them. 
Many of their best families after the war worked out west. 
They desire to have a school of their own, as they do 
-not feel free to go to the institutions of the aristocratic 
people who, having been secessionists, look down upon 



234 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



them, as they believe. In spite of their disabihties they 
have come on to have a conference of seven or eight 
hundred members, a dozen ministers and as many plain 
meeting-houses, with three times that number of appoint- 
ments, but nearly all of them in country places. All of 
their preachers have to support themselves in part on 
their farms or otherwise. They were Union people during 
the war and are all now of one political party. They go 
strong for temperance and are opposed to secret societies, 
having the courage to preach as they believe. I had the 
pleasure of attending their conference. I enjoyed it 
greatly. In order to secure an educational institution and 
some supplemental aid for their preachers, they raised the 
question of putting their conference into connection with 
our National Council, retaining their present title or 
changing it slightly. They were encouraged that such 
aid would be given again on condition that their schools 
and churches would be open to colored scholars and 
members. To this last condition they agreed. But in 
the end they decided to remain in their present standing. 
On that North Carolina slope of the mountain range 
I came across a classis of German reformed churches. 
From 1750 on to the Revolution they were coming down 
from Pennsylvania, settling in the Indian country as it 
then was. Some of them were in as patriots at the battle 
of King's Mountain. They early set up their own 
churches, relying upon the mother state for their minis- 
ters. As early as 1830 they had their North Carolina 
classis. But, like the Welsh, adhering exclusively to 
service in their own language, they have always been 
losing their young people, and so to a considerable extent 
have become absorbed in the other denominations. But 
still they have held on their way. Their native language 



IN THE SOUTH. 



235 



long since passed into disuse. Their classis now numbers 
thirty-one churches and two thousand two hundred and 
ninety-two members, and twelve ministers, who each serve 
two or three or four churches, and who largely support 
themselves by farming and other occupation. Their 
people are thoroughly respectable and influential, and 
many of them are well-to-do. They went largely for the 
Union ; they are strong for temperance ; they are decid- 
edly evangelical, having separated themselves in 1852 
from the General Synod on account of the sacramentarian 
drift of that body. After the war they were, re-united 
with it, though remaining as strong as ever in their 
doctrinal position. Rev. G. W. Walker, d.d., who has 
been on his field in Guilford County for forty years, is 
one of the grandest of men in ability, spirit, and courage 
for moral reform. Not a few of the Union men did he 
help to keep out of the rebel conscription. 

Thirty years ago this people, feeling the need of a 
Christian college, in order to self-preservation, undertook 
to found one at Newton. It was chartered as Catawba 
College. When I first heard of it, I thought that its name 
smacked of a possible love for the wine of that grape. 
But I find in its catalogue that in the town, the county 
seat of Catawba County, " the sale of intoxicating liquors 
is prohibited by chartered rights and by public opinion." 
" Every student, before entering school, is required to 
pledge himself not to keep or use intoxicating liquors 
as a beverage." It turns out that Catawba was the name 
of an Indian tribe which gave name to the fine river that 
runs through the county, and that this is the native home 
of that noble grape for whose ripening our northern sea- 
sons so often fall short. Before the war a subscription of 
;>30,ooo was secured toward an endowment. But this was 



236 PILGKIAFS LETTERS. 

swept down by that torrent of blood. Though the insti- 
tution once graduated a college class and has been prepar- 
ing young men for entering sophomore and junior classes 
elsewhere, it is now pretending only to do high school and 
normal work. In this line it has been doing a great deal 
of good among the young people of its own churches and 
of that region. If it were only better equipped, it would 
serve the people of the mountain slope grandly ; and it 
would develop the needed supply of ministers. For the 
present needs it has an ample supply of buildings. The 
president is Rev. J. C. Clapp, d.d., who, growing up 
in the region here, was prepared for Amherst College, 
where he was graduated in the class behind that of 
his friend, the Rev. William Hayes Ward, d.d. He is 
a noble man, and is assisted by one professor and two 
ladies, who also join the professor in serving four or five 
of their churches in circuits of long Sabbath-day jour- 
neys. Going north to solicit endowment among the 
reformed people, and failing of success, he called upon his 
old friend the editor, through whom the matter was 
brought up of an alliance with the American Missionary 
Association and with its supporting denomination. As a 
result, I had the pleasure of visiting the college and of 
enjoying a sacramental occasion in a sort of two days' 
camp-meeting with the president. I was delighted with 
the intelligence and character and sound evangelical faith 
of these followers of Zwingli in the mountain region of 
Carolina. Dr. Strieby, coming south, also moved by 
aflfinities of blood and of history, dropped off to attend 
their annual meeting of classis and to enjoy a rare 
fellowship. Their timidity in accepting our condition 
that the institution should be open to any worth-y. colored 
student who should apply, broke off the negotiation. 



IN THE SOUTH. 237 

LETTER LXXXVIII. 

THE GEORGIA ASSOCIATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 

Charleston, S. C, November 17, 1884. 
It has two churches in this state, and so came to hold 
its annual meeting with the Plymouth Church of this city. 
Besides the routine of business and of papers and discus- 
sions, we had a visit from Dr. James Powell. He led 
off on the topic of revivals. He gave us his fine lecture, 
" Over the Sea," and preached a glowing sermon before 
the communion. His theme was The Apostle Paul's Ret- 
rospect and Prospect, from the text, " I have fought the 
good fight." At its conclusion, with entire spontaneity, in 
the midst of the great congregation, a low plaintive strain 
was heard, but soon it was a volume of song rolling 
along : — 

"Don't you think I'll make a soldier? 
Don't you think I'll make a soldier of the cross?" 

The afternoon was fading into twilight, fitting well the 
mellow atmosphere of the occasion ; and the striking up 
of that weird voice was like that of the lonely songster of 
the early dawn soon to be followed by the rapture of the 
morning concert. In the songs rendered by local choirs 
to illustrate his oft-repeated lecture on " Slave Music," 
surely Dr. Powell never found before so exquisite a ren- 
dering of the idea and ecstasy of those rhythmic 
gushes : — 

"Yes, we think you'll make a soldier! 
Secret prayer will make you a soldier of the cross." 

The Rev. A. H. Missledine, pastor of the ancient Cir- 
cular Congregational Church of this city, appeared and 



238 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

joined our body, taking part in its proceedings. He also 
brought with him from his church two or three fraternal 
delegates. It is a parental interest which the old church 
of nearly two hundred years takes in this Plymouth, which 
brought over from it more than one hundred members. 
Their fellowship was reciprocated by the Association, 
which sent Reverend Messrs. Lathrop and Roy to preach 
for them on the Lord's day. The body took Saturday after- 
noon for an excursion upon a steamer to Mount Pleasant, 
Sullivan's Island, and Fort Sumter. It was a sign of the 
times that many of the visitors who had been slaves were 
seen inspecting the remains of Fort Sumter. 

At the closing meeting the venerated, sweet-voiced 
senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Dr. Payne, was present. The prayer he offered was a ben- 
ediction. It was very touching as he alluded to the time 
when, having departed from his first love, he was led one 
morning to enter the Circular Church of that his native 
city to be brought back to his Saviour by a sermon from 
the pastor, a New England man, the Rev. Benjamin Palmer. 
It was this that made him love Congregationalism. Nam- 
ing with gratitude the early secretaries and treasurer of 
the American Missionary Association, he said that he was 
the first person to suggest to them the need of such a 
church among the freedmen of Charleston. In 1834, as 
he was teaching school among the free negroes, he was 
driven out of the city and up north because of his adver- 
tising the higher branches he would teach. That was 
not to be allowed. 



PERIOD XI. 

IN THE SOUTH, 1885. 

Itinerary from Austin to Corpus Christi. — Black Men and Big Pastures 
in Texas. — Negroes in the New Orleans Exposition. — Grant's 
Canal Caving in. 



LETTER LXXXIX. 

ITINERARY FROM AUSTIN TO CORPUS CHRISTI. 

January 4, Sunday. — Assisted in organizing in the 
Tillotson Institute at Austin a church of twenty-one 
members. Lord's Supper. Prof. W. L. Gordon's two 
children baptized. 

January 5, Monday. — At Austin depot. Waited for 
delayed train five hours to eight p.m. 

January 6, Tuesday. — Arrived in San Antonio at one 
A.M. Departed for Flatonia at eight a.m., arriving at noon. 
Preached at night for pastor T. E. Hilson, whose second 
child was baptized, as the first had been by the same hand 
at the dedication in Luling, his alternate church. 

January 7, Wednesday. — Up at four and off to Luling, 
arriving at daylight. Off then by livery rig, forty-five 
miles to Riddleville. 

January 8, Thursday. — On to Helena, fifteen miles. 
Rode out with freedman, three miles, to our Colony 
Church. Lectured at night for Pastor Thompson. 

January 9, Friday. — Half a day of writing. Visited 
at another freedman's home, taking supper. Preached 
at night. 



240 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



January 10, Saturday. — Brother Thompson, with an- 
other colored man and myself, started for Corpus, eighty 
miles, reaching Goliad, thirty-five miles, at night. We 
were entertained at Pastor T. Benson's. 

January 11, Sunday. — In the morning, Sunday-school, 
preaching, and communion. At night, preaching. Con- 
ferring all day, between times, and being called upon even 
after retiring at night. 

January 1 2, Monday. — Up and off before daylight, 
without breakfast. But Mrs. Benson had provided for us 
a grand lunch-box that lasted us three for the two days 
through to Corpus. No place on the way to put up ; no 
chance to buy eatables. Our "boss" had planned to reach 
the halfway spot on the Popolota for camping. The day 
wore away, and it was ten o'clock before we came to the 
halting-place. For the last three hours brother Thompson 
led the way, lantern in hand, splashing through the mud 
and water. We turned under a live-oak, took out and 
fed the jaded horses, and ate our snack, and committed 
ourselves to the heavenly Father, and at eleven o'clock 
turned in for the night, brother Thompson on the ground 
under the hack, and brother Eding and I in the hack, 
doubled like a couple of jackknives into four feet square 
of space, and all being of a color. By our side the ponies 
through the night crunched their corn, and, by turns, we 
jumped up to drive off the cows from stealing their hay. 

January 13, Tuesday. — Up and off by daybreak. We 
camped for breakfast lunch. We camped for dinner 
lunch. As we consumed the fragments, how we did bless 
Mrs. Benson ! When, at her own table, we had praised 
her baking and cooking, she responded : " Oh, I learned 
that at Talladega College." Then I had to tell Dr. 
Stricby's story of the native preacher who thanked him 



IN THE SOUTH. 



241 



for the good wife who had been trained in one of the 
American Missionary Association schools, saying that he 
had gotten more than he had anticipated — a good cook 
and housekeeper. On, on we trudged through the heavy 
mud. Night had come, and we were yet seven miles from 
Corpus, and, as we had been fearing, the cold " wet 
norther" that had been drizzling upon us all day, at last 
broke upon us. Again brother Thompson was on the 
lead, lantern in hand, through the slush, though he had 
walked more than half the way through the day. The 
black-waxy mud was heavy for the wheels, and slippery for 
the poor old freedman ponies that had no shoes. Pastor 
J. W. Strong, who for four years has manfully held this 
extreme south-western outpost of Congregationalism, hav- 
ing learned of our approach from a dashing country rider, 
came along in the dark, one mile out to meet us, in 
Oriental style. After our salaams, he galloped back to 
town to make the final arrangements for our entertain- 
ment. It was now 8.30 p.m., too late for the preaching, 
and for once the preacher was glad that the storm had 
kept the people away from the appointment. But the 
next night they made it up, and the preacher tried to 
make it up, too. When Mr. Thompson brought me down 
six years ago we came straight through by fording, belly- 
deep to the horses, across the reef, three miles long, that 
forms the nexus between the Nueces Bay and the Corpus 
Christi Bay. On either side was deep water or miring 
sand. Once since that he has had to tote his passengers 
out on his back. The reef has been washed out in spots. 
Lo ! this time we went up around the head of the bay, 
ten miles farther. Brother Thompson claims that he can 
endure such jaunts without wear or much weariness 
because he is so abstemious as not to drink tea or coffee 



242 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

nor to eat meat. And everybody knows him to be a true, 
pure, and high-minded Christian minister, who, though 
he has had but httle schooling, has been so taught of God 
in the Word, that after these eleven years in the same 
parish at Helena he is yet confided in, there, as an able 
pulpit teacher. In old times his people were Presbyteri- 
ans. Blood will tell, and doctrine too. 



LETTER XC. 

ROMISH PRE-OCCUPATION BLACK MEN "RISING." BIG 

PASTURES. — Ireland's grievance growing up here. 

Corpus Christi, Texas, January 15, 1885. 

The sacred name of this city indicates the religious 
enthusiasm of the Spaniards who once held claim to a large 
part of our continent. The City of Mexico has a street 
named for the Holy Ghost ; and so it uses nearly all of the 
holy titles. Such is the nomenclature of the whole Pacific 
coast. These names suggest the big job which our 
English-speaking Protestantism has had, and still has 
before it, to engross and assimilate the continent. For 
now, in the manifest destiny of Providence, with our rail- 
roads, our national treaties, our missions, and the leavening 
influence of our Republic all at work upon the rem- 
nant of Mexico, it is only a question of time when that 
whole country shall become a trophy to English-speaking 
Protestantism. 

Texas is also taking a hand in the "negro problem." 
And the negro, all unmindful of the wrinkling of the 
white man's brow over the question, is working away at 
his part of the same. He is putting himself in condition 
to command respect. On our overland journey of one 



IN THE SOUTH. 243 

hundred and seventy-five miles from the last railroad on 
the north of this city, we passed the ranch of Joe 
Brothers, who, my driver said, is worth ^20,000 ; and who, 
having managed his mistress' business in the old times, 
has " since freedom " in part supported his master's family. 
Another, mine host, with a great name, Gabriel Washing- 
ton, must be worth well on to $10,000 in lands and stock. 
Of two large farmers in our church in Paris, both deacons, 
one, mine host, told me that a few years ago, meeting an 
old neighbor, he was thus accosted : " Well, Solomon, how 
are you getting along now.?" "Quite well." "Not so 
well," said he, "as under your old master; I can see star- 
vation in your eye." "Not so," said the ex-chattel, "I 
have sixty acres of as good land as there is in Texas, all 
paid for ; I have fifteen hundred pounds of * meat ' all 
cured ; I have six hundred bushels of corn in the crib ; 
and when I want beef, I have only to shoot one down out 
of my herd." In the " Colony " Church at Helena on my 
way I found mine host one of several well-to-do farmers, 
with a nine months' school, and a pure and faithful pastor. 
Of course these are exceptional cases. The masses of 
colored people are very ignorant and low down. 

" Who was that man that got out of the hack ">. " was a 
question I heard on the way with its answer, " He 's the 
nigger preacher." If the query had been put to me, I 
could have answered, He 's a man who is not above his 
title nor his work. That title does n't hurt him. When he 
was pastor of the Plymouth Church of Chicago, he was 
called a "nigger preacher." The Savannah News has 
repeatedly called him "a colored preacher." The only 
insult that he has ever received in seven years' travel at 
the south was at a Texas hotel table a year ago. But 
cominsT this time to the same hotel he heard from a col- 



244 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

ored man that the offenders had said to him, " The gentle- 
man was insulted, and we are sorry for it." So the trav- 
eler is "optimistic" still. 

From Texarkana, in the north-east corner, it is eight 
hundred and sixty-nine miles by rail to El Paso in the 
north-west corner, and five hundred and ninety-four to 
Laredo in the south-west, while by rail from Orange in 
the south-east to El Paso, it is nine hundred and fifty-three 
miles. Texas has now six thousand miles of rail, and 
of this all but one thousand miles has been built in the 
last ten years. Robert West's " Empire of the South- 
west " must be seen to be appreciated. It is easy to write 
down 1,500,000 head of cattle as the annual export, worth 
$50,000,000. But to realize these figures you must ride 
by rail for some hundreds of miles among the grazing 
herds, and then strike off overland, as I did, for one 
hundred and seventy-five miles, every_ mile of the way 
through " pastures," except the first twenty-two and except 
the passage through the only two towns on the way. 
When Bryant, fifty years ago, came out to visit his brother 
at Princeton, 111., he sang of our western prairies as 
" the unreaped fields, boundless and beautiful." You would 
think that these were still "boundless," only that every 
five or ten miles you have to alight to open a gate through 
a barb-wire fence that marks the domain of some cattle 
king. "The cattle upon a thousand hills" no longer 
seems a poetic license. They are all here. There is one 
of these pastures that has 60,000 acres and 37,000 head 
of cattle. 

But here again is Ireland's grievance growing apace — 
land monopoly. The grazing land is pretty much all shut 
up. This not only keeps out the new settlers from this 
new country with its rich soil and a delightful climate, but 



IN THE SOUTH. 



245 



it squeezes out the old settlers. The cattle kings, taking 
in their great areas, enclose the actual residents, who 
for years have been farming and raising stock. Shut in, 
annoyed in numberless ways, their cattle branded into the 
great herd, they must sell out and go. Yet none but the 
big men will buy, and so they make their own terms, and 
the smaller men flee from the meshes of the barbed wire, 
leaving their homesteads to fall into disuse and decay save 
as grazing ground. Not a few counties are thus decreas- 
ing in population. A lone settler told me that once they 
had a church of sixty members, a school and a store, but 
now all are gone. Having lost his negroes, he came in 
there after the war to make up his loss in stock. But of 
this he had lost a hundred head that had been worked into 
the big drove. Villages once flourishing are dried up in 
the same way. Cattle are taking the place of people, who 
would pay taxes, make society, build school-houses and 
churches. It was this crowding of the small farmers and 
the cutting off of the cowboy's occupation that led to the 
frenzy of fence cutting, whereby hundreds of thousands of 
cattle were turned loose. It was this that called an extra 
session of the Texas legislature the last year. Heavy pen- 
alties were assessed for fence cutting and the big stockmen 
were required to run fences around the premises of the 
small farmers. But this does not satisfy. It does not 
stop the exodus of residents from before the march of the 
Pharaoh of land monopoly. 

For the ferriage of the Neuces River the charge was 
forty cents, but when the driver told the two ferry-girls 
that the traveler was a clergyman, they said their father 
never charged ministers. Then, as they had walked a 
quarter of a mile from their home through the black- 
waxy mud and through the cold drizzle, I offered them 



246 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

a quarter each, but they replied : " Oh, no, we don't want 
the money; ministers need it more than we do." It 
was a Christian family out upon the ranch, but the older 
girl had been away to a ladies' seminary, and lady-like she 
was. 

It is a funny "den" that you "meet up" with fre- 
quently along the way. It is about the size of a musk-rat 
house, from two to three feet high, built around the roots 
of a cactus clump or a mesquite bunch, with twigs, old 
bark, cattle chips, etc. And whose house is that .-' It 
was built by the wood-rat, which is as large as a squirrel, 
and there he lives. He also takes in the brown squirrel 
as a tenant, and, strange to say, the rattlesnake also. A 
former driver opened a den to show me the occupants. 
Only the rat and the squirrel were at home. But my 
friend told me that he had once killed a rattlesnake five 
feet long just as he was coming out of the den. It is said 
that these tenants live together in peace, only that the 
snake eats the young of his associates. When parents 
take into their home that creature that " biteth like a ser- 
pent and stingeth like an adder," though they themselves 
may get along with him, let them look out lest their young 
be destroyed. 



LETTER XCI. 

THE EXHIBITS OF NEGROES IN THE WORLd's EXPOSITION 
AT NEW ORLEANS. 

New Orleans, January 20, 1885. 

One of the first schools for freedmen in New Orleans, 

named for Frederick Douglass, was kept in an old negro 

trader's slave-mart that yet bore the ill-disguised sign, 



IN THE SOUTH. 



247 



"Virginia Negroes for Sale." And now they come 
into this World's Industrial Palace with their fruits of 
scholarship, of ingenuity, of industry, of art ; as citizens, 
as cosmopolitans, they come. Ample and conspicuous 
space is accorded them. And mightily to their credit 
does, their exhibit testify. 

Some of the articles on exhibition are worthy of special 
mention — a black-walnut pulpit, in design and finish as 
beautiful and tasteful as any church could wish ; a sofa, 
finely upholstered, and the covering embroidered with 
artistically executed needlework, showing four prominent 
events in the life of Toussaint I'Ouverture ; a chandelier, 
very beautiful in design and finely finished ; a complete 
set of dentist's instruments, in polish and finish remark- 
able ; a little engine, made by a silversmith of Knoxville, 
who was a slave, and who has become a skilled workman 
of local reputation. He never worked in a shop till he 
had one of his own. He learned the use of tools without 
any instruction. These articles would certainly merit 
attention even if put in competition with similar speci- 
mens of the very best workmanship. 

Examination papers from schools were numerous, show- 
ing proficiency in penmanship, spelling, arithmetic, algebra, 
geometry, free drawing, grammar, and translations from 
the classics ; fine needlework of all kinds ; millinery, dress- 
making, tailoring ; portrait and landscape painting in oil, 
water-colors, and crayon ; photography ; sculpture ; models 
of steamboats, locomotives, stationary engines, and railway 
cars ; cotton presses, plows, cultivators, and reaping- 
machines ; wagons, buggies ; tools of almost all kinds, 
from the hammer of the carpenter to the finely wrought 
forceps of the dentist ; piano and organ (both pipe and 
reed) making ; carpentry, cabinet-making ; upholstery ; 



248 PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 

tinsmithing ; blacksmithing ; boot and shoe making ; 
basket and broom making ; pottery, plain and glazed ; 
brick-making ; agricultural products, including all the 
cereals and fruits raised in the country ; silk-worm culture; 
fruit preserving ; flour from a mill, and machinery from 
a foundry owned by a colored man ; patented inventions 
' and improvements, nearly all of them useful and practi- 
cal, were quite numerous ; drugs and medicines ; station- 
ery ; printing and publishing. 

Their gallery of paintings is greatly creditable. They 
presented not a few ingenious inventions. Besides evi- 
dences of scholarship, the show of the products of the 
industrial departments in the schools maintained for them 
was most gratifying to all classes of people. Before the 
war nearly all the mechanical work at the south was done 
by slaves. A man with a good trade was worth twice 
as much as without one. Since the war, while those old 
mechanics have been dying off, but few colored young 
men have been learning trades. White bosses would not 
take them, and colored bosses had not the capital with 
which to use them. At this rate soon there would be no 
colored mechanics, and then their place would be filled 
by those imported from the north or from abroad, and the 
black people would be driven to the wall, left to be mere 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, at thirty-three 
cents per day and rations. What must be done.'' Bring 
into the school process the industrial lines. Train the 
hand as well as the brain. Teach the girls sewing, cook- 
ing, nursing, telegraphy, etc. Teach the boys practical 
agriculture, blacksmithing, carpentering, tinning, printing, 
harness-making, etc. These rudiments of trades will 
start them off for final success, and will give them at 
once and increasingly the better positions and pay of 



IN THE SOUTH. 



249 



artisans. So is it with the philanthropist as with Job : 
"The cause which I knew not, I searched out." 

In this way industrial training is made prominent. At 
Tougaloo, Miss., a large farm, besides cultivating vege- 
tables and cereals, raises fine fruits for the Chicago 
market, fine blooded cattle for the region, and a black- 
smith shop, a tin shop, and a carpenter shop and a brick- 
yard are run by the young men under competent teachers, 
while the girls are drilled in cooking and sewing ; at 
Talladega, Atlanta, and Hampton, farms are run and trades 
are taught ; and so also at Fisk University, the LeMoyne 
Institute, Memphis, the Lewis High School, Macon, 
Ga., and at other places : sixteen in all. At Atlanta, in 
the Knowles Industrial Building, built at a cost of six 
thousand dollars from a legacy left for the purpose by 
Mrs. L. J. Knowles, of Worcester, Mass., wood-working 
and iron-working are carried on. From the John F. 
Slater Fund, under the management of Rev. Dr. A. G. 
Haygood, aid is received for such work at seven of these 
institutions. 



LETTER XCn. 

grant's canal at vicksburg. 

ViCKSBURG, Miss., April 20, 1885. 
In the fall it will be twenty years since Doctors I. P. 
Warren and G. S. F. Savage, and Pilgrim, were here to 
see what the American Tract Society of Boston and the 
American Home Missionary Society, under the bidding of 
the Boston National Council, could do for the supplement- 
ing of the war. Rev. J. W. Alvord was with us a part of 
the time of that tour of three months, organizing branches 



250 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

of the Freedmen's Savings Bank. I see here now in large 
letters across a prominent building the legend, " Freed- 
men's Savings Bank." All was perfectly safe as he was 
planting these institutions, for government bonds alone 
were to be the security. Alas, for the day when Congress 
altered the charter so as to allow the funds to be loaned 
on real estate ! 

By the bend opposite the city, General Grant's flotilla, 
in passing down the river, had to run twice under the rebel 
guns. Grant's Canal failed to turn the river across that 
bend ; but six years ago the Mississippi took a notion to 
go across there, any way. Disdaining the help of man it 
struck in three hundred yards below and in a single night 
did up the job. The engineer of The Natchez now here 
tells me that coming up that night on The Katie, a 
mammoth vessel, built at a cost of $200,000, and striking 
the mighty current of the break they were three times 
turned around by it before they knew what the matter 
was. Now, the Vicksburg landing is three miles below ; 
and in front of the city, where was once sixty feet of 
water, willows and grass are growing, on which cattle are 
feeding, and the old bend for three miles up the river is a 
beautiful lake. 

This Father of Waters retains all of his riparian right 
to go anywhere he pleases within his valley. The noted 
Davis bend has been cut off to become an island. A 
planter, seeing his sixty thousand dollar plantation fall- 
ing into the river, sold it for three thousand, whereupon 
the current stopped cutting, and turned to restoring the 
land. I was up at Greenville, a fine county-seat on the 
east bank of the river, and found the town tumbling into 
the flood. Within ten years six hundred feet have been 
cut away, and of this one hundred and fifty feet have fallen 



LV 77/ E SOUTH. 25 I 

this very winter. I found that house-moving was a regular 
business, a la Chicago. My hotel, the only one in the 
town, one that had cost ^18,000, being of brick, will proba- 
bly take its bath within a year. Yet we organized a 
church there to stay. 



PERIOD XII. 

BACK L\ THE WEST, 1885-87. 

Transition. — Woman's Work for Woman at the South. — Methodist 
Episcopal Work Among the Freedmen. — Dakota Indian Conference. 
— In Colorado. — New West Commission. — Slater Fund. — Cen- 
tennial of Territory of the North-west and of Louisiana Purchase. — 
Georgia's Prison and Chain Gang for Missionaries and Teachers. — 
An Old Experiment in Indian Land Severalty. — The Martyrdom of 
Elijah P. Lovejoy. 



LETTER XCIII. 

TRANSITION. 

Chicago, June 8, 1885. 
Really, in what an eventful time has this pilgrimage 
been made. Slavery, rebellion, war, freedom, recotistruc- 
tion civil and moral — these are catch-words of the era. 
Mormonism, defiant, clutched by the throat, squirming ; 
our country's population almost doubled ; the deep inte- 
rior explored ; the " New West " discovered, and first 
so-named by Pilgrim in a paper read before the Boston 
National Council in 1865 ; the peace policy set up among 
the Indians; the new temperance revival ; the enthusiasm 
born for the evangelizing of our cities and of our immi- 
grants from foreign lands ; the great benevolent societies 
marching on under the behest of the churches and pas- 
tors ; moral affiiliations going on as respects our neighbors, 
the Indians, the negroes, and the Chinese within our bor- 
ders ; among: these transcendent interests have we all been 



BACK IN THE WEST. 253 

traveling. At the close of the war Pilgrim spent three 
months in rummaging about among the " peculiar institu- 
tions " of the south, and The Independent heard from him 
every week ; and so for these last seven years has he been 
going up and down that part of our own dear land, mak- 
ing notes and printing 'em, growing in his love for the 
people there, colored and white, seeing wonders of pro- 
gress, and yet oppressed with the sense of the magnitude 
of the work still to be done in the progress of national 
and Christian assimilation. It is like the rolling of a 
kaleidoscope to turn over the pages of these great octavo 
scrap-books in which Lady Pilgrim has preserved his notes 
by the way. The future historian of the west and of the 
south may find here some material. 



LETTER XCIV. 

woman's work for woman at the south. 

Chicago, July 31, 1885. 
The thrill of foreign missions for the last dozen years 
has come from woman's work for woman ; and the one or 
two hundred thousand dollars a year put by the women into 
each of several missionary boards has been a mighty relief 
of their exigent exchequers. With less parade, and yet 
upon a much larger scale as far as the work upon the field 
is concerned, and with more of personal exposure and 
ostracism, here has been a movement on the part of women 
sublime indeed. It has been, too, for a people whose origi- 
nal paganism had been indurated by the immoralities 
inherent in the system of slave-holding. It has been also 
by the same process — school teaching, Bible reading, 
house-to-house visitation, instructing mothers and daugh- 



254 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



ters in the duties growing out of the mysteries of their 
own being. And, as a result, thousands upon thousands 
of youth have come forward into intelligence and virtue ; 
multitudes of homes have been purified ; scores of young 
men have been led into the ministry ; and a generation of 
youth by these examples have been taught a reverence for 
woman which has become a hidden power of their life. 

When this Association, which was the first of all organ- 
izations to give the gospel of light to the benighted chil- 
dren of bondage, started out, it used the hand of Christian 
women for its introduction, and all along to this day it has 
shared with them in this fellowship. As early as Septem- 
ber, 1 86 1, under the guns of Fortress Monroe, the work 
began to result in the far-famed Hampton Institute. The 
first teacher was Mrs. Peake, a colored woman, whom the 
Lord had ready at hand. The next, in July, 1862, was a 
daughter of our missionary, Rev. J. S. Greene, of the 
Sandwich Islands ; and the next, in the December follow- 
ing, was a lady who went with her husband. Rev. E. S. 
Williams, to St. Helena Island. Writing at that date, he 
says : " Mrs. Williams will go with me and teach them to 
sew and sweep. They need kind lectures on cleanliness and 
neatness." Then as the Union lines sweep on, lady mis- 
sionaries are pushed forward to Norfolk, Beaufort, and to 
Hilton Head. As the army, in 1863, occupies Corinth, 
our lady recruits are hurried on to that point, to serve in 
the freedmen's school and hospital. And when, in the 
exigency of war, Corinth must be evacuated, the corps of 
lady workers follows soldiers and freedmen to Memphis, 
pursued, fired upon and nearly captured, as the weary trip 
of several days is made. Once in Memphis, the school 
and the hospital find them at work again. 

And so by the fall of 1864 the Association had on its 



BACK IN THE WEST. 255 

muster-roll the names of one hundred and sixty-nnie 
women. And then only seventeen days after our troops 
have entered Richmond our teachers follow, starting a 
school which in two weeks has fifteen hundred pupils, the 
most of the instructors being women. Then as the 
military veterans are being mustered out it is found that 
the Association's Army of Occupation numbers 363, of 
whom 261 are ladies who had enlisted not for three months 
or three years, but many of them for life ; and these are 
found stationed all along the front and in fifteen different 
states. In 1866 the ladies muster 264; in 1867, 410. In 
1870, of the 533 workers, 450 are women. The annual 
report of 1869 brings out the fact that up to that time 
2,628 different missionary laborers had been enlisted, of 
whom at least 2,000 were women. From that time on 
to this the list of ladies has ranged from 200 to 250, so 
that in these twenty-five years it is a safe estimate that 
not less than 3,000 women have been in this service. 
What a multitude of gospelers ! It should also be con- 
sidered that the time when these numbers ran the highest 
was the Ku-klux period, when the brave women could 
stand in places where the men could not live. In Mis- 
sissippi at midnight one of these heroines is waited on by 
a Ku-klux company in masks and gowns. After a hasty 
robing she is obliged to open the door. The ruffian crew 
are themselves abashed, as their leader breaks out : 
" Why, you are a lady ! " and then gives her twenty-four 
hours in which to leave, notifying her that they will be 
around by that time to see that she is gone. " Low-down 
fellows were they," the citizens said. " No," answered 
she ; " such men don't wear fine top-boots and have soft 
hands." The lone woman surrenders, saying that she 
scorns to tell them that, though she is an Illinois girl, she 



256 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

was the granddaughter of Rev. Dr. Allen, of Huntsville, 
Alabama. Another woman's school at Austin, Texas, is 
broken into by the roughs. Then the post-commander 
sends a guard to stand by day at her door and to escort 
her home at night, and back in the morning. At another 
place in Alabama the Ku-klux Klan draw up in line before 
the lady teacher's castle of a school-house home, and fire 
a volley of beans and shot through her windows on each 
side of the chair where she is sitting. But now she is 
entering the eighteenth year of service on that same spot. 
Another, having her school in an old North Carolina rebel 
gun-factory, when a man offered to be one of twenty to 
put her on the cars and send her away, gave as her 
response : " I was sent here by the American Missionary 
Association, and when that says go, I will, and not 
before." She is now entering on her twenty-third year of 
service and is as brave as ever. Time would fail us to 
relate of these women only such deeds of valor as have 
come to our ears. The best of all is that they cherish 
no revenge. Theirs has been the victory of the passive 
virtue, but a triumph as real as that of military valor. 
They went down south to do good to the poor and the 
lowly, to build something of their own noble spirit and 
character into the life of the outcast. Nobly have they 
been fulfilling their mission. 

" What honor and what dignity hath been done to 
Mordecai for this } " said the king, as he came, in the 
restlessness of the night, to the record of the man who 
had saved his life. "There is nothing done for him," 
was the truthful reply. In the turning of the books of 
the last day, the Supreme Monarch will say of these 
unheralded Christian patriots : " Let royal apparel be 
brought, and let it be done to them as to those whom the 
King delighteth to honour." 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



257 



The First Woman's Missionary Society dates back of 
the modern era of missions, and, indeed, back of the Acts 
of the Apostles. It was set up in the early part of the 
ministry of Jesus in Galilee, and here is the record of it 
in Luke's Gospel (8 : 1-3) : " And it came to pass 
afterward that he went throughout every city and village 
preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom 
of God, and the twelve were with him. And certain 
women, Mary, called Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife 
of Chusa, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many 
others, ministered unto them [Revised Version] of their 
substance." How were these missionaries to be subsisted .-' 
Here were our Lord and the Twelve, traveling on foot from 
town to town, and, as is likely, holding their evangelistic 
meetings every day. Our Lord did not feed his company 
by miracle ; he did not command stones to be made bread. 
These Christian women had thoughtfully set themselves 
to aid in this matter. It seems that they had formed a 
circle as an auxiliary to the Saviour's missionary society, 
and the object of their branch was to minister of service 
and of substance. They were evidently of the well-to-do 
class, as they had "substance" to draw from. And there 
were not a few of them, but Mary and Joanna and 
Susanna and many others. Importance was attached to 
Mary, in her being named first, and in stating the city 
from which she came, Magdala. She was, perhaps, the 
president of the circle. (When shall we ever be done 
with the perfectly unauthorized aspersion that she of 
Magdala was not a chaste woman T) Then, as there were 
saints in Caesar's household, to whom the apostle Paul 
sent salutations, so thus early was there at least one in 
Herod's home, Joanna, the wife of his steward. The 
emphatic thing in the history is that these women were 



258 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

associated for service, and that they ministered of their 
substance. Quite likely these and "the many," not only 
drew from their own purses, but called upon other sisters 
to enter into this fellowship of giving. And so that was 
a great service rendered to the gospel, as it began to be 
preached ; and the Saviour accepted it as such in an 
unhesitating way, proving thereby his confidence in the 
purity and the faithfulness of these Galilaean friends. 

And it seems to have been a continuous service, one 
that lasted through the Saviour's ministry ; for it was 
upon the occasion of his last passover at Jerusalem that 
they followed Jesus and his company up from Galilee 
to minister unto them. And the evangelist Mark says 
that these women, who, at the crucifixion, were looking on 
afar off, were the same " who also, when he was in Galilee, 
followed him and ministered unto him." And he gives 
their names : " Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother 
of James the less and of Joses, and Salome, and many 
other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem." 
So, when the dear body was laid in the tomb of Joseph, 
the women also which came with him from Galilee fol- 
lowed after, and beheld the sepulcher and how his body 
was laid, and then returned again with their prepared 
spices and ointments to anoint him, only to become 
themselves the first witnesses to testify of his resurrec- 
tion. And so when the Pentecost had come, that world's 
missionary prayer-meeting, these same women, and Mary, 
the mother of Jesus, were there. It was but natural that 
this enduring woman's organization should merge itself in 
the grand pentecostal evangelism. 

Are not our woman's bureaus and boards of the 
present time the veritable successors of that original 
auxiliary, which had the benediction of the Saviour's 



BACK IN THE WEST. 259 

approval and participation ? Are not the women of these 
now ministering of service and of substance to the Lord 
Jesus just as much as did those of Galilee? By their 
prayers, their sisterly attentions, their letters of sympathy, 
their material offerings in behalf of the brethren and 
sisters of our Lord in foreign parts, or among the lowly 
poor of the four races who dwell in our own land, are 
they not following the common Master and his disciples, 
and ministering unto them as really as though they had 
been walking with them over the hills of Galilee? And 
surely nothing can more gratify and inspire these women 
in their special missionary work than to feel assured that 
the Saviour does thus approve and accept their loving 
ministry of service and of substance. 



LETTER XCV. 

METHODIST WORK AMONG THE FREEDMEN. 

Chicago, August 31, 1885. 
My first meeting with Bishop Gilbert Haven was in 
1878, when from a sail to Africa he came into dry dock at 
Clifton Springs, where I had been undergoing repairs for 
more than a year. I was just then considering a transfer 
to the south. I opened the matter to him. With that cath- 
olic spirit of his he kindled at the idea. He urged my going. 
He cleared away some difficulties. He magnified the fact 
that my denomination was called upon to do much in the 
way of helping the south take care of its dusky citizens. 
If I had been a Methodist preparing to go down and work 
under him, he could not have been more cordial in his 
proffer of personal fellowship and helpfulness. When I 
came to meet him in Atlanta, where we were both located, 



260 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

his delicate attention was more tiian I had a right to 
expect. He took me into the inner circle of his social 
fellowship. Much did he aid me. At the Clark Univer- 
sity I greatly enjoyed his scholarly and vigorous baccalau- 
reate and also a theological lecture which was a marvel in 
its comprehensiveness, its profundity, and yet its sim- 
plicity. That institution itself, I believe, was a child of 
his own brain and heart. Seeing things big, he located 
upon several hundred acres of land outside of the city. 
But the late shooting of a new railroad by the campus into 
the city and the working of two great thoroughfares out 
in that direction, with street-cars, have now quite brought 
it into the town. The Clark is steadily advancing in its 
quality and in its extent. A son-in-law of the bishop is 
now at the head of the theological department. Besides 
the literary, theological, classical departments, it has the 
industrial. From the city the smokestacks of its shops 
make it look like a factory. The young men are taught 
work in iron, wood, and tin. Some of their own buildings 
have been put up by the students. The young women are 
taught cooking, sewing and, I think, nursing. 

In the Clark there is Professor Crogman, a graduate of 
our Atlanta University, of whom we are quite fond. He is 
a rare instructor, an orator with not a little genius. Eight 
years ago at our annual meeting in this city, when we gave 
an evening to speakers of the four races, red, yellow, 
black, and white, he represented the negro ; as he did also 
in Madison, Wis., at the National Teachers' Association. 
At both places he carried the award of genuine eloquence 
and of noble sentiment. In his address for us, referring 
to the mixture of blood down there, he said that some- 
times you could hardly tell where Ham left off and Shem 
began. At our thanksgiving service in Atlanta, following 



BACK IN THE WEST. 26 1 

the election of President Cleveland, after I had been gath- 
ering some occasion for thanksgiving from the fact that 
the leading southern people had been putting themselves 
on record as the very best friends of the black people, the 
professor came forward and said : " Yes, but we will try 
them. Two little birds sat singing on the fence. One 
sang, ' I love you ' ; and the other sang, ' Show it.' So 
let them declare their love. We will see if they show it." 

Bishop Warren, too, I have heard upon that same 
commencement platform, delivering one of his elegant 
addresses, without any apparent lowering of its tone to 
meet his congregation. Indeed, these people are good 
hearers, as slavery had cultivated their attentiveness and 
their memory. They were accustomed not only to the 
pulpit but also to the rostrum, where they took in the 
spirit of our American institutions and so became better 
qualified to exercise the elective franchise — at once their 
education and their defence^ than the masses of the peo- 
ple landed upon our shores from the monarchies of the old 
world. 

Every-where over the south I found that the colored 
people knew of Bishop Haven and held him in great rev- 
erence for his heroic devotion to their welfare. Eminently 
had he the courage of his convictions. The " Illustrated 
History of Methodism" says that he was "one of the 
most admired and best hated men in America." His final 
departure was a triumph. 

I have repeatedly visited the Claflin University at 
Orangeburg, S. C. It is a beautiful affair. It has the 
normal, classical, and theological departments, and has an 
adjunct of a farm of a hundred or more acres, where the 
boys are trained in fine agriculture and horticulture. The 
state pays $4,000 a year out of its United States agricul- 



262 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

tural fund toward the running expenses, on the ground of 
its normal work. Others of these institutions I have vis- 
ited. They are all worthy of the largest confidence, of 
still laro:er endowments. 



LETTER XCVI. 

THE DAKOTA INDIAN CONFERENCE. 

Ascension, D. T, September 29, 1885. 

It has been to me a delight, coming from the Dakota 
General Association, where the Indian missionaries, 
pastors, delegates, and teachers appeared as members, 
to turn in at the annual meeting of the General Confer- 
ence of th2 Dakotas. It is here upon the Sisseton 
Reservation, which is along the middle of the east line 
of the territory, a wedge of land fifty or sixty miles long 
and averaging a dozen miles in width. It is a beautiful 
region, with hills, and gulches of trees, and springs, and 
a good soil. This remnant of the Sissetons, a band of 
the Sioux, numbers sixteen hundred. They have taken 
up farms, have cabins and frame-houses, and teams and 
cattle. They are doing quite well in their experiment. 
The agent of the government. Colonel Thompson, is a 
worthy Christian man, a Presbyterian elder. But the 
people are now practically independent, having no annuity 
and no rations, receiving only each fall a small supply of 
clothing. 

We meet ten miles away from the agency, at the 
Ascension Church, Rev. John B. Renville, pastor. This 
name was not taken from the Catholic calendar, but from 
the fact that here the Sioux coming westward ascended 
the Coteau, the plateau of rough, rolling country. 



BACK IN THE WEST. 263 

This convocation represents a part of the fruitage of 
the planting of the American Board half a century ago 
under Stevens, Riggs, and Williamson. These churches 
are upon the Sisseton, the Yankton, the Santee, the 
Teeton, and Devil's Lake, Ree, and Mandan Reservations, 
with one in Montana and one in Canada, thirteen in all, 
with over one thousand members. They are now under 
the care of the Presbyterian Boards and of the American 
Missionary Association. 

The first two days were given to a theological institute 
for the native pastors and candidates and teachers, led by 
Reverend Messrs. J. P. Williamson, A. L. Riggs, T. L. 
Riggs, and C. L. Hall. There are thirty-five of the insti- 
tute men, and eight or ten of the lady teachers have come 
along to help to make up the occasion and to enjoy it. 
The topics are of the practical sort, such as Sermon- 
making, Exegesis of the. Word, Personal Character, 
Financial Management of the Churches, Schools, and 
Societies. Great good is gained by the young men from 
these instructions and discussions. As to the entire 
program, I find that it is our Alabama convocation 
over ao^ain : theological institute, conference of the 
churches, anniversaries of the Dakota Native Missionary 
Societv, of the Woman's Missionary Society, and of the 
Young Men's Christian Association. 

In the conference, first we have the salutations of the 
messengers of the churches and their pastors, and of 
the visiting friends. Colonel Thompson, in behalf of the 
people of his agency, welcomes those from all the others, 
and testifies that it is only the Christian religion that 
could have civilized them so. He said that he had had 
only one case of petit larceny, and that was tried by one 
of the justices elected by the people. Pilgrim gave the 



264 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

greetings of the Presbyterian and Congregational people, 
who, for half a century, had been helping the Dakotas. 
He was also put on upon the topics, The Power of Char- 
acter ,in the Religious Teacher and Preacher, and Work 
among the Colored People, A. L. Riggs and Williamson 
interpreting. Some of the subjects discussed were : 
Duties of the Young Men's Christian Association ; 
How much Land can a Man retain Permanently ? What 
should Parents be willing to deny themselves for the 
Education of their Children ? How to secure the Spirit- 
ual Growth of a Church ; Methods for raising Money for 
Church and Missionary Purposes. As to land, the senti- 
ment ran : Only so much as a man can cultivate. 

Their missionary society is now ten years old. In that 
time they have raised $5,449. In the last six years they 
have raised an average of $819. For their thousand 
members this swells up, the last three years, well on to 
a dollar for each. Looking over the treasurer's book for 
these ten years I find that each church is represented 
almost every year in the money column. They have a 
regular organization, with a constitution and three direc- 
tors, who appoint missionaries and appropriate the funds. 
They are supporting two native missionaries at Devil's 
Lake, and one at the Cheyenne Agency. What a lesson 
here for the hundreds and hundreds of our churches 
at home, which are not reported in the missionary column ! 
And what a rebuke to those churches which say. We 
areso poor we must use up every thing at home! These 
are poor people just redeemed from heathenism. They 
have to support the gospel at home, but they want to 
give it to those who have it not. Of that $\,i6i given 
the last year, $541 came from the Woman's Auxiliary, 
$100 from the Young Men's Christian Association, and 



BACA' IN THE WEST. 265 

^520 from the churches. So, even among the Christian 
Indians, the women are even with the churches and many 
may go ahead of them, as their white sisters are doing. 

Mr. WiUiams, a representative of the Young Men's 
Christian Association system, was here to receive this 
one into fellowship. Sermons were interspersed along 
the program. The Sabbath, the fourth day of the 
conference, is the great day of the feast, with the Lord's 
Supper, and abundant preaching. 

It is a beautiful thing that the sons of Doctors William- 
son and Riggs are following in the footsteps of their 
fathers. Besides these, Robert Riggs, married to one of 
the lady teachers, has settled near Fort Sully, and so is 
at hand for sympathy and help. The daughter Martha, 
Mrs. Morris, has been associated for fifteen years with her 
husband in the Good Will Boarding School at the Sisseton 
Agency. Isabella is at the North China Mission. The 
burden of all these missionaries is for recruits. Who will 
volunteer } 

Will it pay to enlist and give money in this process of 
Indian Christianization .'' Yes. This experiment proves 
it. The settlement of the people in severalty of land 
and in citizenship can no longer be called an experiment. 
Look on this convocation of dignified worshipers, clad in 
citizen's dress and clothed and in their right mind ; take 
account of these societies- and of the churches out of 
which they have grown ; see the beaming of character 
under Christian training, and say not again that there is 
no use to try to save these native Americans. The 
exigency of the people favors the undertaking. Their 
game is gone. They must take the white man's way. 
The flood of emigration has thrown them into islands 
of reservation, so that they can be the more easily 



2 66 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

assimilated into the Christian nation. They are . only 
a quarter of a million, anyhow. Why make a long job 
of it >. 

But what can be shown for the half-century of this 
Dakota Mission .-' I have been studying that question 
closely. See this convocation. Observe the devotion to 
it marked by the fact that two of these delegates have 
come six hundred miles ; another three hundred ; that a 
dozen families have driven their own teams over two hun- 
dred miles, taking over a week of time to reach this 
Jerusalem ; and that sixty or seventy teepees (tents) are 
pitched here, each by the side of a good wagon, with its 
own horses, oxen, and colts, feeding ; hard by, a camp- 
meeting with four hundred counted guests. Surely it 
belongs to the Church Militant ! Then add to this our 
own Santee Industrial and Normal Boarding School and 
half a dozen of a lower grade ; add the first-class board- 
ing school of this agency. Then consider that the Indian 
work of the Episcopalians among the Sioux has fattened 
upon the literature, which the way-wise and converted 
people furnished to their hand by this mission. Count in 
the Flandreau and Brown Earth settlements of a hundred 
Sioux Christian families, citizenized. Count in the capital 
of a prepared people at Devil's Lake, laid hold of by the 
Catholics. Reckon in that colony in Montana, and that 
larger one in Canada. Take also into the inventory the 
Riggs Dakota Bible, his grammar and dictionary, the 
hymn-books, the school-books, the translation of Bunyan's 
Pilgrim and other such works, to the number of forty-two, 
as soon to be shown by a Smithsonian Bibliography under 
the index name of " Riggs." Put down the Dakota news- 
paper, the lapi Oaye, and also the English-Dakota 
Dictionary, which John P. Williamson is now preparing, 
and who shall say that this has not been a paying mission ? 



BACK IN THE IV EST. 



267 



Corollary : Mr. Williamson says that fifty children have 
been born to the Dakota missionaries, that he knows them 
all, that not one of them has turned out badly, and that 
nearly all have become Christians and are making useful 
people. Even under unpropitious conditions God's cove- 
nant holds good. / 



LETTER XCVII. 

COLORADO AND "NEW WEST " WORK. 

South Pueblo, Colorado, October 29, 1885. 
Thirteen years ago, on a tour through Colorado, I 
came to Pueblo, and found it a town of adobe houses, on 
the Arkansas, at the then southern terminus of the Den- 
ver & Rio Grande Railway. The pastor of the Presbyte- 
rian church told me that he had a membership of Congre- 
gational people. So I looked over the river, upon the fine 
plateau, and prophesied a South Pueblo and a place for a 
Congregational church. Turner, of Missouri, could see a 
Congregational church in one old woman. Pilgrim could 
see one in a virgin prairie. And now, in South Pueblo, 
he finds not only one, but two Congregational churches, 
the first of which royally entertained the General Associa- 
tion. He also finds here a city of 15,000 people, nearly 
half of whom are on the south side, with water-works, 
with street-cars, electric lights, the largest smelter in the 
world, and another smaller, with a third going in ; also, 
a steel-rail rolling-mill, a great foundry, and other facto- 
ries. The Denver & Rio Grande has branched its narrow 
Sfause out over the crest of the continent, to the total of 
over two thousand miles. The smelters here, by their cen- 
tral location, are able to secure such a variety of ores as 



268 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

to furnish their own flux, without the extra expense of 
procuring the necessary fluxing material. 

Pueblo means simply a village. So when the Spaniards 
discovered here in the heart of the continent a tribe of 
Indians who were not nomadic, but who lived in villages, 
they called them Pueblos. Of these, in New Mexico, there 
are now over 10,000, who live in nineteen villages. It is for 
these that the University of New Mexico is providing a 
special department, which the American Missionary Asso- 
ciation is helping to sustain. 

Colorado College, with Professor Strieby serving as 
acting president, is getting out of the woods. The col- 
lege administration is running satisfactorily. It has an 
able corps of instructors and a fine body of students. It 
has a superb campus and a grand building. It is properly 
located. It is an essential to this Rocky Mountain region. 
It has an unusually sympathetic and helpful constituency 
in the local community. It deserves patronage and endow- 
ment. It has at hand, as foster-mother, the second Con- 
gregational church of the state. 

The mutual relation of Christian colleges and home 
missions has become an axiom in the problem of the 
evangelization of our new territories and states that are 
settled by the people of the older portions of our country. 
My experience in our southern work has profoundly 
impressed me with the wisdom of the New West Com- 
mission in its movement for primary and academic educa- 
tion in the midst of our Mormon and Spanish-American 
regions. We have found at the south that the school 
process is absolutely essential to any sound church devel- 
opment. The old people who came out of their bondage 
in Egypt soon passed away. Their children took forty 
years of training under Moses for their exalted mission. 



BACK IN THE WEST. 269 

Our hope as to this latter race of ex-bondsmen is in the 
intellectual and moral nurture of their children. We find 
that they readily take on our ideas. They soon grow up. 
They make the best and about the only material for our 
church fellowship. In this way the American Missionary 
Association, since the war, has developed one hundred and 
twenty churches, which, in the main, are a delight to our 
Christian workers. 

The same process is needed in those territories where 
Mormonism and Romanism predominate. The other nas- 
cent states will themselves take up the regular public 
school process. But in these the American idea of edu- 
cation must be fostered ab extra. Yet in this new under- 
taking there is the mighty advantage of having Christian 
schools, with the Bible in them and its system of morality 
and religion. Our teachers for the south are beforehand 
tested as to their Christian character and missionary 
spirit. In this way we draw out a grade of consecrated 
talent which the mere business of teaching could never 
reach. Christly souls, hungering to do their share under 
the great commission of the Master, find here the oppor- 
tunity to become the most effective missionaries. They 
have had the honor of leading multitudes of souls to the 
Saviour ; they have brought out most of the young men 
who are now the cultured pastors of the churches ; they 
have led the way in organizing the most of those same 
churches. By no means could they have gained such 
results, and — as to themselves — such privilege, such 
honor. Precisely this is the process by which these 
Christian teachers are to lead out the children of Utah 
and New Mexico into intelligence and into character, into 
church membership and into worthy citizenship. 

And so naturally comes along the relation of this new 



2/0 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

scheme to the grand scheme of the American Home Mis- 
sionary Society — the same as that of the old order of 
Christian colleges, only that it starts in farther back. 
The superintendents and preachers of the Society will 
counsel and help the school -workers of the Commission. 
The school-houses will become preaching stations. The 
lady teacher, with her Sunday-school, will become the 
nucleus of the Church itself, which, under the culture of 
the Spirit, will be a growth out of the Christian school. 
And so the leaven, the mustard-seed of the Gospel, will 
come to mighty proportions. 

That old Society, which our churches have used in span- 
ning the continent, and which we of the west delight to 
honor as the "mother of us all," may well welcome this 
new coadjutor, leaving to it the school business, while 
cooperating in the same, and then going on in its own 
heaven-blessed mission and building up the churches of 
Jesus Christ. The planting of superintendents in the 
Rocky Mountain regions shows her purpose to embrace 
the opportunity to meet the exigency. In adjusting the 
relations there has been need of wisdom, but now the 
deck has been cleared for action, the lines re-formed for a 
renewal of the warfare. And we of the southern work, 
saluting the banners of the right wing as they dip into 
the valleys and rise to the mountain-tops of the New 
West, will, on the left, take courage to drive on our 
"March to the Sea." 

The work of the Commission for the academic year 
1885-86 is given below: — 

Schools of all grades 35 

Number of teachers 63 

,, ,, pupils 2,560 

,, ,, Mormons 764 



BACK IN THE WEST. 2 "J I 

Number of apostates . 541 

,, ,, Mexicans 142 

,, ,, Sabbath-schools . . . • 29 

,, ,, attendance esthnated in Sabbath-schools . 2,200 

The chartered academies are those at Salt Lake, Albu- 
querque, Las Vegas, and Trinidad, and others at Lehi, 
Park City, and Ogden. These figures attest the grip 
which this young society has laid upon this last of the 
twin relics. That it has at once leaped into an acknowl- 
edged position, with ^50,000 a year, attests the exigent 
need of this agency. Its teachers go back and forth, a 
dozen at a time, on their way to or from the campaign. 
Carlyle had no place in his book of heroes for the name 
of a woman. But if he should pass by Joan of Arc, he 
might have found true heroines among the missionary 
women who go to do battle with pollution and savagery. 
All hail to these women who are holding the fastnesses of 
the mountains for their country and for Christ ! Their 
leader. Secretary Charles R. Bliss, is their Great Heart. 



LETTER XCVIIL 

THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND. 

Chicago, July 2, i! 
Mr. Slater, of Norwich, Conn., having had in mind 
for some years a plan for devoting a large sum of money 
to the education of the freedmen, in March, 1882, put the 
same into shape by an ably drawn letter addressed to the 
men whom he had selected to be trustees of the fund. 
These men were ex-President R. B. Hayes, Chief Justice 
M. R. Waite, William E. Dodge, Rev. Phillips Brooks, 
Daniel C. Oilman, John A. Stewart, Alfred H. Colquitt, 



2/2 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Morris K. Jessup, James P. Boyce, and William A. Slater. 
By his stipulation it was to be a " Christian education " 
by which he would seek to bestow blessings upon the 
emancipated people. The trustees held their first meet- 
ing in New York, May i8, 1882. A charter from the 
state of New York was accepted. R. B. Hayes was 
elected president, M. R. Waite, vice-president, M. K. 
Jessup, treasurer, and D. C. Gilman, secretary. Mr. 
Slater, being present, paid over to the trustees one mill- 
ion dollars. Something more than half of this was in 
railway bonds drawing five and six per cent, interest, and 
the remainder in cash, which was also invested in bonds. 
By the charter in New York these funds are to be exempt 
from tax, except such as are in real estate. At the first 
a small sum was set apart, to be increased until it should 
reach $100,000, as a guarantee fund, and this, by the 
report of 1886, has rpached $86,068, an increase beyond 
the clean million. Clearly this fund has no debtors such 
as the states of Tennessee and Florida, whose bonds 
turned over to the Peabody Fund to the amount of hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars have been repudiated, even 
while appropriations from the fund to the sum of many 
thousands of dollars a year had been received by them, 
until the trustees decided, after labor had with these 
defaulting commonwealths, that they should be stricken 
from the list of beneficiaries. 

The board, with the approval of Mr. Slater, at its next 
meeting in October, 1882, appointed as General Agent 
of the fund. Rev. Atticus G. Haygood, d.d., ll.d., presi- 
dent of Emory College in Georgia. This, as it seemed at 
the time and has since been proved, was an appointment 
eminently fit to be made. Dr. Haygood by some has 
been termed the Luther of the south. Such comprehen- 



BACK IN THE WEST. 273 

sion had he of the work of the missionary teachers and 
preachers at the south that long before he entered upon 
the same he had pronounced "immortal honor" upon 
them, and had said : " Suppose that these northern teachers 
had not come, that nobody had taught the negroes, set free 
and made citizens ! The south would have been uninhab- 
itable by this time." His own views have doubtless had a 
process of development, and wisely he has kept himself 
in an attitude to educate and lead along the public senti- 
ment of his section. He has thus been in a position to 
lay his hands both upon the north and the south, and so 
to make peace. It is this that has made him so eminently 
useful in the office which he holds under the Slater Corpo- 
ration. He is leading the southern people into an appre- 
ciation of our work and workers among them as no north- 
ern man could have done ; and at the same time he has 
carried along the confidence of the missionaries and their 
supporters. 

Mr. Slater, although connected with a Congregational 
society, provided that his gratuity should be administered 
without respect to denominations. Only this would he 
insist upon, a " Christian education." And so upon the 
board there was put only one member of the ecclesiasti- 
cal system to which he was attached, and he the president 
of a non-denominational university, Dr. D. C. Oilman, 
of the Johns Hopkins. And so, in the appropriations, 
schools in all branches of the church that had been doing 
eminent work among the colored people are made 
recipients, as will appear in the report appended. The 
trustees started out with the theory of aiding such 
institutions as should give special prominence to the 
subject of industrial training, and such scholars as should 
be trained in some manual occupation simultaneous!)- 



2 74 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

with their mental and moral instruction. The system 
with this feature in it is working well. It puts the aided 
institutions upon their best endeavor in the line both of 
scholastic and industrial training. Dr. Haygood's last 
report counts eight thousand colored youth indirectly 
aided and over three hundred teachers in the schools 
connected with the Slater Fund. It has also stimulated 
the raising at the south and at the north for such work 
to an amount in the last eighteen months, as he estimated 
it, of $60,000. 

For the year ending October, 1883, the fund appropri- 
ated $16,250; for 1884, $17,106; and for 1885, $36,764, 
a total of $100,120. For the current year the sum of 
$40,000 is appropriated. While this is a magnificent 
charity in itself, it scarcely brings any relief to the 
exchequers of the several missionary societies, for it 
gives that more may be given. Thus of the twenty-nine 
institutions aided last year the seven that are under the 
American Missionary Association received $8,700, which 
necessitated about as much additional outlay. And then 
that amount, generous in itself, is but a small proportion 
of the $208,21 r, of expenditures at the south by the 
Association for the same year. So will it be with all of 
the other societies ; and so the friends of each, while 
encouraged by this auxiliary fund, will yet not find them- 
selves relieved at all in the matter of personal contribu- 
tions to this cause. Below is given the schedule of 
appropriations for the school year of 1884-85, with an 
indication of the denomination or society to which each 
school belongs : — 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



275 



Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga., A. M. A. . 
Austin High School, Knoxville, Tenn., Ind. 
Benedict Institute, Columbia, S. C, Bap. . . . 
Brainerd Institute, Chester, S. C, Pres. ... 
Central Tennessee College, Nashville, Tenn., M. E 
Claflin University, Orangeburg, S. C, M. E. . 
Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., M. E. . . . 
Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., A. M. A. . 
Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va., Ind. . . 
Hartshorn Memorial Institute, Richmond, Va., Bap 
Howard University, Washington, D. C, Ind. 
Kentucky Normal University, Louisville, Ky., State 
Leland University, New Orleans, La., Bap. 
LeMoyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn., A. M. A. . 
Leonard Medical School, Raleigh, N. C, Bap. 
Lewis Normal Institute, Macon, Ga., A. M. A. 
Lincoln Normal University, Marion, Ala., State. 
Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn., M. E. 
Mount Albion State Normal School, Franklinton, N 
Mount Hermon Female Seminary, Clinton, Miss., 
Roger Williams University, Nashville, Tenn., Bap 
Scotia Female Seminary, Concord, N. C, Pres. 
Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C, Bap. . . . 
Spelman Female Seminary, Atlanta, Ga., Bap. . 
State Normal School, Huntsville, Ala., State. 
State Normal School, Tuskegee, Ala., State. 
Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., A. M. A. . 
Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas, A. M. A. . . 
Tougaloo University, Tougaloo, Miss., A. M. A. 
To special students 



C. 
Ind 



State 



2,000.00 

500.00 
1,000.00 

500.00 
1,500.00 
2,000.00 
2,000.00 
2,000.00 
2,000.00 
1,000.00 
1,000.00 
1,000.00 
4,000.00 
1,200.00 
1,000.00 

500.00 
1,000.00 
1,000.00 

400.00 
1,000.00 
1,400.00 
1,000.00 
2,000.00 
2,314.10 
1,000.00 
1,000.00 
2,000.00 

600.00 
1,000.00 

450.00 



Total/ $36,764.10 



2 76 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



LETTER XCIX. 

THE NORTH-WESTERN CENTENNIAL. THE LOUISIANA 

PURCHASE. 

Chicago, July 15, 1886. 
April 7, 1888, will come our great north-western cen- 
tennial. The ordinance for organizing the territory north 
of the Ohio was passed July 13, 1787. The next year 
the first settlement was made at Marietta, Ohio, and there 
the centenary celebration is to be held. By that organic 
actjfreedom scored a great victory, for slavery was to be 
excluded from all the region which now makes up our 
five interior states ; and by it the sixteenth section of 
every township in all this wide domain was consecrated 
to public schools, and subsequently the same principle 
was applied to all the territory acquired, reaching to the 
Pacific coast. Thomas Jefferson has ordinarily had the 
credit of having introduced that proviso for freedom. 
Three or four years before, he had proposed that no 
.slavery should be allowed in the territory after 1800. 
For this he deserves honor. But when the ordinance 
was finally passed, he was not in Congress, nor was he in 
this country, being abroad upon public duty. The pro- 
vision for freedom and education was introduced by 
Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, and Rev. Dr. Manasseh 
Cutler, of the same state, who afterward organized the 
colony and came with it to Marietta, had much to do in 
Washington with the procuring of that beneficent act 
of Congress. As the centennial comes on we shall fight 
over again the "Toledo war," and the battle between 
Illinois and Wisconsin, over boundary lines. The ordi- 
nance had provided for the future setting up of three 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



277 



states in the region covered by Ohio, Indiana, and Illi- 
nois, and if any of the territory north of these three 
should be also organized separately, it was stipulated that 
the boundary should be a line running east and west by 
the lower extremity of Lake Michigan. The people of 
Ohio supposed that this line would strike north of Toledo, 
a rising sea-port which they desired, and over which their 
jurisdiction had been extended. But Michigan coming 
on claimed the line originally named which should give 
Toledo to the peninsula. The militia were ordered out 
on both sides. The federal government intervened and, 
as a compromise, Michigan accepted the upper peninsula 
lying on the lower side of Lake Superior. As it turns 
out, Michigan had a war that did not cost a life, and she 
gained a vast region of the richest iron and copper ore. 
I well remember the excitement over that Toledo war in 
Ohio when I was but a child. But Wisconsin fared 
worse. Illinois took a slice off from the south because 
she wanted a sea-port and Michigan had despoiled her 
of the mountains of metal. 

The first and second of the articles of compact are of 
the nature of a bill of rights. The third is as follows : 
" Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to 
good government and the happiness of mankind, schools 
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. 
The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards 
the Indians ; their lands and property shall never be 
taken from them without their consent ; and in their 
property, rights, and liberty they shall never be invaded 
or disturbed unless in just and lawful wars authorized by 
Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity 
shall, from time to time, be made for preventing wrongs 
being done to them, and for preserving peace and friend- 



2/8 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

ship with them." Article VI declares : " There shall be 
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said 
territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." 

In 1903 will come the centennial of the Louisiana 
Purchase. President Albert Salisbury, of the Whitewater 
Normal, Wisconsin, has made a fine contribution to the 
geography of our country in a settling of the western 
boundary of that purchase. This was in an article of his 
in The Pacific School Jownal, July, 1884. Did that 
purchase include Oregon and Washington and Idaho ? 
General Walker's map in the census report of 1870 so 
made it. Some school histories have followed him, and 
notably a centennial map that aimed to show that bound- 
ary in colors. But the president proves that France 
never claimed any thing beyond the Rocky Mountains. 
The royal charter of Louis the Fourteenth to Anthony 
Crozat, 1 712, limited Louisiana to the valley of the 
Mississippi. Then in 1800 Napoleon retroceded it to 
Spain. It was to be " with the same extent that it now 
has in the hands of Spain and that it had when France 
possessed it." Marbois, Napoleon's minister of the 
treasury, who as such was the negotiator in the sale, in 
his History of Louisiana, 1829, says: "The shores of 
the western ocean were certainly not included in the 
cession " ; and again : " The first article of the treaty 
meant to convey nothing beyond the sources of the 
Missouri." As other authorities he quotes President 
Jefferson, John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State, and 
others. Mr. Adams made our title to Oregon rest on : 

1. The discovery of the Columbia by Captain Grey, 1792 ; 

2. The exploration of Lewis and Clark, 1805 ; 3. The 
settlement at Astoria, 181 1. So there is no foundation 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



279 



in international law nor in history for a French claim to 
any country beyond the crest of the Rockies. Bryant's 
Popular History of the United States reports the matter 
according to the idea of this article, giving it credit. 
So also do Anderson and Swinton in their histories. 



LETTER C. 

Georgia's prison for her missionaries to the cher- 
okees, and chain-gang for her teachers of the 

NEGROES. 

Chicago, September i, 1887. 
In 1829 Georgia passed a law to extend her jurisdiction 
over the nation and the territory of the Cherokees, and so 
to dispossess them of their ancestral domain. Their right 
of possession had extended back to a period beyond the 
genesis of American history. This right had been recog- 
nized by the colony and the state of Georgia in six differ- 
ent treaties made with them, and by the United States 
government in fifteen treaties made with the same people. 
By all such treaties Georgia had had purchased for her, of 
Indian tribes, by the United States, 19,927,200 acres ; 
while the Cherokees as a nation had retained for their 
home territory only 5,000,000 acres, which was about three 
hundred acres a head for the sixteen thousand who were 
finally removed. The execution of the law was nothing 
but Ahab's extending his proprietorship over Naboth's 
vineyard. It was an over-riding of all the rights of pos- 
session, of treaties, of legal enactments, and of the nation- 
ality of the Indians. Then the dividing up of this Chero- 
kee country into one-hundred-and-forty-acre lots to be 
drawn at lottery by citizens of the state, stimulated their 



2 8o PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

cupidity, even to violence, in seizing upon the houses and 
improvements of the Indians and of the mission stations. 
The law also, in order the more certainly to secure the 
land, provided that the missionaries of the American 
Board, and any other white men who should remain upon 
those lands, should be subject to an imprisonment for four 
years at hard labor. 

Those missionaries, as early as 1815, had entered that 
field when the American Board was only three and a half 
years old. Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, on his way to it from 
Andover, passing through Washington, laid the matter 
before President Madison, who ordered the Secretary of 
War to say that the agent for Indian affairs would erect 
a house for the school and one for the teachers, to be fol- 
lowed by others. The agent was also instructed to furnish 
" two plows, six hoes, and as many axes for the purpose of 
introducing the art of cultivation among the pupils ; and 
when female pupils shoukl be received, a loom, a half- 
dozen spinning-wheels, and as many pairs of cards." In 
1 8 19 President Monroe and General Gaines visited the 
mission. The President expressed himself so well pleased 
with all he saw,that on the spot he ordered a much better 
building for the girls' school, at the expense of the govern- 
ment. By this mission the Cherokees, in 1830, had been 
so advanced in civilization that one half of those in Georgia 
had learned to read. They had schools, courts, a legisla- 
ture, eight churches, and stringent laws against the sale of 
strong drinks. At that time, as President Bartlett says, 
three fourths of all the church members in the missions 
of the American Board were among these and other In- 
dians. These missionaries, knowing their rights in the 
Cherokee nation as secured by treaties with Georgia and 
the United States, and by the patronage of the govern- 



BACK nV THE WEST. 28 1 

ment, decided to remain among their people and take the 
consequences. 

Their arrest was by no warrant of civil process, but by 
the Georgia Military Guard, who went around from station 
to station gathering up their victims. Rev. S. A. Worcester 
was taken from his home while his wife was confined to her 
bed in sickness. Dr. Butler, the physician and catechist, 
had a chain fastened around his neck by a padlock, with 
the other end around the neck of a horse, by the side of 
which he walked. As night came on and the horse was 
kept walking at a rapid step, the doctor, being unable to 
see the wilderness road, and liable at any moment to fall 
and so be dragged by the neck until the horse should stop, 
was at last taken up behind the saddle, his chain being 
still fastened to the horse's neck, and short enough to 
keep his neck close to the shoulder of the guard. In this 
situation the horse fell and both riders came under him. 
The doctor was much hurt and the soldier more. Turning 
in at midnight, during a drenching rain, the prisoner was 
chained to his bedstead by his ankle. The next day he 
had a walk of thirty-five miles, with the chain on his neck, 
relieved by an occasional ride. The Rev. Mr. Trott, a 
Methodist missionary, and Mr. Proctor were chained to a 
wagon in which they were not allowed to ride, and at night 
chained to the wall of a house by the neck and to one 
another at the ankle. In this way the missionaries were 
brought fifty to seventy-five miles to jail at Camp Gilmer; 
and here is the account of their imprisonment for eleven 
days before their examination, given by the Report of the 
American Board for 1831 : — 

" After lying eleven days in a miserably filthy log prison, 
in the middle of July, without window, bed, table, chair, 
or any article of furniture except a small piece of board ; 



262 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

with no floor to stand, sit, or sleep upon, except rough and 
crooked poles ; being allowed to receive no letters nor 
send any, nor have any bundle pass out or in without 
being searched, nor allowed any interview with a friend 
except in hearing of the guard, and being forced to hear 
the abominably blasphemous and obscene language of the 
Georgia soldiers, a writ of habeas corpus was obtained, 
which, after some delay, took them out of the hands of 
the military and brought them before the inferior court of 
Gwinnette County, where they were released on giving 
bonds to appear at the superior court in that county in 
September." There had been no need of the cruelty of 
those chains, for these men did not wish to escape. 
Colonel Nelson, the officer in charge, as he turned them 
into jail, tauntingly said : " Fear not, little flock, for it is 
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 
And this was echoed two or three times by others. As 
the jailer thrust them in, he said : " There is where all the 
enemies of Georgia have to land — there and in hell." 
Their request of Colonel Nelson that they might have 
religious service was derisively refused. 

The trial took place in September, and the three mis- 
sionaries and eight other white men were by the jury 
found guilty, and by Judge Clayton sentenced to four 
years' hard labor in the penitentiary, with a recommenda- 
tion to executive clemency on condition that they would 
not return to live in the Cherokee country. Brought to 
the prison at Milledgeville, all accepted the proffered 
release except Worcester and Butler, who were assigned, 
one to the shoe-shop and the other to the cabinet-shop. 

Meantime an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United 
States brought a reversal of the verdict and an order 
for the release of the prisoners, William Wirt being their 



BACK IN THE WEST. 283 

attorney, and Chief Justice Marshall rendering the 
opinion. This decision also annulled the Georgia law 
as unconstitutional. Georgia refused to obey the order, 
and so took her place by the side of South Carolina in 
nullification. The prisoners appealed to President Jack- 
son for relief, and Old Hickory answered through Lewis 
Cass, his Secretary of War, that the action of Georgia 
had rendered "inoperative" the federal authority, and he 
is reported to have said : " Let Marshall execute his own 
decree." Old Hickory, who could swear by the Eternal 
that South Carolina should not nullify in a matter of 
tariff, when slavery lifted its behest for slave soil, had 
to succumb. Then the prisoners, through their attorney, 
gave notice of an appeal to the Supreme Court for the 
enforcement of its decision. This notice they afterwards 
withdrew, not from any recognition of the rightful stand 
of Georgia, but from the patriotic consideration of reliev- 
ing that state and the country from the consequences 
of coming into collision with the federal government, and 
of postponing the day of the fateful crash that came at 
Fort Sumter. While these men were in prison their 
wives made the long, rough journey to Milledgeville to 
visit them. On their way, when some Presbyterian 
friends tried to persuade them to advise their husbands 
to submit to the Georgia law they answered : " If we 
thought we would say one word to weaken the purpose 
of our husbands we would not go another step." And 
when the children met their fathers in prisoner's garb 
they shrank back from their proffered embrace, but rallied 
when smiled upon. While I am writing this letter I am 
permitted to meet a woman who was one of those little 
children, a daughter of Mr. Worcester, then four years 
old, who, growing up in the mission, was married to the 



284 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

Rev. Mr. Robertson, and has been for many years laboring 
with the Creek nation in the Indian Territory. She 
showed me the New Testament translated into the lan- 
guage of that people by herself alone. She has a 
daughter who for a time was a teacher in the Atlanta 
University and is now again laboring among the Creeks. 
The mother bears a vivid recollection of those times of 
trial. When, after sixteen months in prison, its doors 
were opened to them, these men wrote Governor Lump- 
kin : " We beg leave respectfully to state to your Excel- 
lency that we have not been led to the adoption of this 
measure by any change of views in regard to the princi- 
ples on which we have acted, or by any doubt of the 
justice of our cause or of our perfect right to a legal 
discharge in accordance with the decision of the Supreme 
Court in our favor already given." Mr. Worcester was 
in the line of eight generations of ministers. He and 
Dr. Butler had the Puritan grit. When set at liberty 
they went right back to their labor among their dear 
Cherokees in spite of the cruel law. And their wives 
were of the same stuff. They went back home from their 
visit to the prison having kept their determination that 
no Georgian should see their tears, lest they should 
construe them as regretting their husbands' course, which 
they never did. These missionaries and the insulted 
national authority waited for the infliction of retribution 
that came at the battle of Missionary Ridge, which was 
named from the very mission where such usurpation and 
nullification had defied the American Board and the 
American nation. 

In Dr. Humphrey's missionary library I find a volume 
of the speeches made in Congress in 1830 against the 
bill for the removal of these Indians. Thev wore made 



BACK IN THE WEST. 285 

by Senators Theodore Frelinghuysen, Sprague, of Maine, 
and Robbins, of Rhode Island, and by Representatives 
Storrs, of New York, Ellsworth, of Connecticut, Johns, 
of Delaware, Bates and Edward Everett, of Massachu- 
setts, and David Crockett, of Tennessee. The discussion 
lasted five days. These were masterly orations, covering 
the whole ground of Indian treaties and legislation back 
in the mother country and in the United States. These 
all took the side of the Cherokees against Georgia. 
David Crockett represented the largest district of any 
man in Congress except Duncan, of Illinois, having 
twenty-two thousand constituents. In his speech he 
uttered some sentiments denunciatory of the bill which 
might well be considered by the present legislature of 
Georgia. Turning away from the south to go with the 
north he said : " I have constituents to settle with, I am 
aware, and I should like to please them as well as other 
gentlemen. But I have also a settlement to make at the 
bar of my God, and what my conscience dictates to be 
just and right I will do, be the consequences what they 
may." 

At Clifton Springs I was accustomed to meet General 
B. A. Hill, a retired veteran of the regular army. He 
told me the story of the driving out of these Cherokees 
in 1S37. General Winfield Scott was sent with an army 
of two thousand men to do the job. Hill being then a 
young lieutenant. At first the people were notified to 
come into corral, preparatory to deportation. None came 
in. Then the army was divided into squads to go about 
and make prisoners of the families. Hill was in charge 
of one of those squads. He told me that he found the 
Indians living in a more civilized way than the crackers 
round about them. He described their thrift, their 



286 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

churches, their schools, and their temperance habits. 
He said that when he came to their homes he had to 
apologize for his hateful business by stating that he was 
acting under orders. He said that as the families were 
brought out of their homes sometimes a man would go 
back and put the key under the door, saying, "Surely the 
government will yet relent and allow us to return to our 
homes." As the battered soldier of many wars, after 
these many years, told this tale, his eyes were suffused. 

As a sign of the degree of their civilization I quote 
from that speech of Edward Everett a summary of prop- 
erty besides their lands and homes: — 36 grist-mills, 13 
saw-mills, 762 looms, 2,486 spinning-wheels, 172 wagons, 
2,923 plows, 7,683 horses, 22,531 cattle, 42,732 swine, 
2,566 sheep, 66 blacksmith shops, 9 stores, 2 tan-yards, 
several public roads, ferries, and turnpikes ; they also had 
8 churches, and 18 schools with 314 scholars, under the 
American Board. 

It was ten months from the time of the first corraling 
to the arrival on the Arkansas River, and five months 
through the winter of rain and mud and cold and snow 
were consumed in the transpoFtation over a distance of 
seven hundred miles ; while four thousand of the people, 
one fourth of their entire population, were buried by the 
way. This was not by the severity of the army treat- 
ment, but by the incidental strain of the journey. How 
could a people thus depleted, maddened, and discouraged 
by the treatment they had had, ever again take root in 
a strange and uncongenial land.-* This is an answer to 
the question sometimes asked, What have you to show 
of established institutions for all the years of your 
missionary work } Yet those leading tribes of the Indian 
Territory are a civilized people. They have courts, a 
constitutional government, churches, and seminaries. 



BACK IN THE WEST. 287 

And so it is no new thing for Georgia to be pushing the 
Glenn Bill, which proposes a thousand-dollar fine and chain- 
gang service for a year upon the Atlanta professors if they 
persist in teaching their own little children, natives of the 
state, in their own university classes. But how will it look 
for Georgia to go on and pass and execute the law ? Let 
us see. In that Board of Trustees of the Atlanta Univer- 
sity are Col. E. A. Buck, General Lewis, and Rev. S. E. 
Lathrop. Colonel Buck left the principalship of an acad- 
emy in Maine to enter the service. Since the war he has 
remained in the south to help build up its fortunes. He 
is one of the heaviest men in an Alabama iron-furnace vil- 
lage. He represented that state in Congress for a time. 
He is now in the office, held for some time at Atlanta, of 
clerk of the United States district court. He lives in 
one of the finest houses of the aristocratic Peach Tree 
Street. He is one of the most respected and public- 
spirited citizens. General Lewis carries an empty 
sleeve in his Atlanta store. He was the first general 
superintendent of the schools of Georgia, whose adminis- 
tration is still pointed to as the model. Mr. Lathrop was 
a cavalryman in the Union service, but for nine years has 
served as missionary pastor in connection with the Lewis 
Normal Institute in Macon, Georgia, so named for the 
general above referred to. Now, how will it look for chiv- 
alrous Georgia to treat these soldiers as is proposed by 
that law } 

How will it look for Mr. Grady to come north to orate 
upon the New South, and Governor Colquitt to plead here 
the temperance cause, and be obliged to report that they 
had left behind such men, for such an offence, in the chain- 
gangs of Georgia .-* 

Rev. and General Erastus Blakeslee is called to leave a 



288 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

pastorate at New Haven, Conn., to take the place of E. 
A. Ware, the deceased president of the Atlanta Univer- 
sity. How will it look to the Grand Army of the Republic 
to have him and these other comrades thrust into the pen- 
itentiary to be hired out in the coal-mines of Georgia for 
the crime of allowing the children of the teachers in that 
institution to be taught in the classes presided over by 
their parents .'' 

As the students of that school have gone forth to teach 
in the country, some of them have been sought out by 
white teachers who have said : " Now we have not had 
any chance for normal training, and 3'ou have had the 
best ; we want you to instruct us how to teach." Sup- 
pose, then, these white teachers, aspirmg to make them- 
selves proficient in their profession, shall say : " We will 
not stop with this second-hand instruction ; we will go to 
the headquarters and put ourselves under those accom- 
plished professors in the Atlanta University." And, 
really, how will it look for Governor Gordon, as the 
executive of the laws, to say to such : " If you do go there 
I will send those teachers and trustees to the convict camp 
and the chain-gang " .'' 

Among the finest specimens of magnamimity in south- 
ern character has been the readiness of the Board of Ex- 
aminers to rectify former opinions and to report the attain- 
ments of the colored students in that institution. At first 
they gave up the notion that the colored pupils could not 
advance into the higher branches of study, and that the 
mulattoes would be smarter than the blacks. In their 
report of 1882, expressing desire that Prof. T. N. Chase, 
of the chair of Greek, should be retained, they say : " We 
would deem it unfortunate that so important an element 
of education as Latin and Greek should fall into any dis- 



BACK IN THE WEST. 289 

repute in the Atlanta University." Again they say : " We 
have seen him [the colored student] quite as much at home 
in Latin, Greek, mathematics, ethics, mental and physical 
science, as in the more rudimentary studies." And again : 
"We do not believe that we have ever seen better teach- 
ing than we have seen in the Atlanta University." Now, 
how will it look to put that Professor Chase and his asso- 
ciates into prison and along by the side of Georgia's galley- 
slaves, just because he was allowing his own children and 
some of theirs to enjoy these rare advantages } Then, 
Rev. C. W. Francis, professor and pastor of the University 
Church, and Rev. Dr. Bumstead, acting president, both 
sons of Yale, will Georgia enjoy the sight of those men in 
the chain-gang .-' 

Rev. Dr. Isaac Anderson, who, in 18 19, founded Mary- 
ville College in East Tennessee, brought colored young 
men into that college, and even kept them in his own 
house, without objection made, as says Professor Craw- 
ford, of the same institution, himself a native Tennesseean. 

How it would have looked if that college president had 
been thrust into prison for that act ! And how would it 
look if the present incumbent. Rev. Dr. P. M. Bartlett, 
should be treated in the same way, because for the last 
score of years a few colored young men were always to be 
found in that college, which has educated a large number 
of ministers and other professional men for all of that 
south-east .-' 

People of Georgia, in presence of the Christian senti- 
ment of the world, how will it look } It would seem to be 
too bad to celebrate this semi-centennial of the deportation 
of those outraged Cherokees by repeating a tragedy of 
like enormity. 



290 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

LETTER CI. 

AN OLD INDIAN EXPERIMENT. 

Chicago, October i, 1887. 

Quite in contrast with that treatment of the Cherokees 
was the deahng of Massachusetts with Stockbridge In- 
dians three half-centuries ago, whereby citizenship and 
land-in-severalty were conferred upon those aboriginal 
inhabitants. Land-in-severalty for the Indians, as now 
provided for by a law of Congress, is not altogether a new 
thing. Mr. E. W. B. Canning, in The Magazine of American 
Hisiory ior August, upon "Indian Land-grants in Western 
Massachusetts," shows that such an experiment was tried 
in Stockbridge nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. 
The mission had been doing its work. The meeting- 
house had its missionary and its school-master. The 
General Court, in 1749, ordained that upon a public 
notice to be posted upon that meeting-house the Indians 
should there assemble and make the necessary arrange- 
ments. By this plan it was found that sixty of these 
dusky roamers of the lower Housatonic were entitled to 
ownership in severalty. Among these 1,670 acres of land 
were divided. For others a quantity of undivided land 
was reserved. The six English families who had been 
invited to come and settle among them six years before 
as pattern farmers and housekeepers remained in posses- 
sion of their endowments, one of whose dwellings, built in 
1747, is still standing. 

The same law enacted that these Indians " shall be sub- 
jected to, and receive the benefit of, the laws of this gov- 
ernment to all intents and purposes in like manner as 
other his majesty's subjects of this province are subjected 



BAC/v IN THE WEST. 



291 



and do receive." Of course the influences of their church, 
their school, their model farmers and housekeepers, and 
the social habits and examples of their white co-occupants 
had operated to set them forward in civil status quite in 
advance of any of our aboriginal tribes of the present time 
except the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and the Sisse- 
tons and the Santees of the Sioux. They were repre- 
sented among the town and church officials, bore military 
titles, and were enrolled among the alumni of Harvard and 
Dartmouth. 

The experiment worked as well as could naturally have 
been expected. The Indians were civilized, citizenized, 
and for the most part Christianized. After the manner 
of the New England town organization, as their record 
book shows, they held regular annual, and many special, 
meetings for more than thirty years. And yet this state 
of things continued less than forty years. And why ? 
The writer finds the solution of the question in the intru- 
sion of white purchasers and settlers, by whom the little 
Indian commonwealth was absorbed. He presents a num- 
ber of specimens of sixty votes recorded for the sale and 
transfer of the undivided lands. These run thus : Fifty 
acres to a white hotel-keeper, " in consideration of his 
having his ox killed ; one hundred acres to another for his 
paying £,iy to liberate Unkarring from prison ; fifty acres 
to another to encourage him to set up his blacksmith's 
trade in Stockbridge." Other appropriations of land were 
made to make improvements in the town, to pay its debts, 
and to reward the services of surveyors, physicians, etc. 
In short, it was the stronger crowding out the weaker ; 
the inchoate civilization yielding to the matured. And 
so, when the friendly Oneidas, in New York, offered them 
a share in their own reservation, they accepted the same 



292 PILGRIAPS LETTERS. 

and made a removal. Then they were removed to In- 
diana, then to Green Bay, then to Lake Winnebago, and 
then, forty years ago, to their present locaHty in Shawano 
County, Wisconsin. There they had some fine timber 
land. White speculators coveted it. But the tribe as a 
body would not vote to alienate their land. Then the 
timber sharks craftily persuaded them that land-in-sever- 
alty was the true idea. This once accomplished, the tim- 
ber land was bought from individuals at nominal prices, 
and the birthright was thus squandered, its inheritors 
being then turned out to shift for themselves, which re- 
sulted in their becoming absorbed by the wilder natives of 
the neighborhood. 

Mr. Canning says in conclusion : " To my own mind one 
thing is certain — that to render any experiment of land- 
owning in severalty effective of solid and permanent good 
to the Indian, absolute prohibition of white residence among 
them, save for educational purposes, should be enacted and 
enforced." 

The Dawes Law, now to be put into execution, provides 
that the allotted lands shall be inalienable for twenty-five 
years. This, surely, in the light of the experiment here 
detailed, is as short a time as is wise or safe to be fixed. 
But this law, from which so much of good is anticipated, 
provides for selling the surplus lands to white settlers, 
which will be in the face of the theory just quoted, that 
all such contact must be interdicted. But, as Mr. Beecher 
in his Cleveland letter said of the freedmen, they would 
have to take the consequences of liberty, so these to be 
newly made citizens must take the consequences of citizen- 
ship. They will improve under the process of exercising 
their rights as citizens ; they will learn from the example 
and by the stimulus of their pale-faced neighbors. 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



293 



But every body can see that in order to any suc- 
cess in this scheme of citizenizing the Indian he must be 
Christianized. He can not be legislated into character. 
Land-ownership is not an equivalent of enlightenment. 
Merely secular schools will not build up, however, nor 
sweeten the life of families, nor make the essential unit 
of the beneficent commonwealth. And in order to 
this civilizing, the Indians must have Christian ideas, and 
these come from the Bible, which the native wants in 
his own language. It is usurpation to take away from 
them their vernacular Bible, as is implied by the policy of 
casting out of all Indian schools instruction in the native 
dialect. 



LETTER Cn. 

THE MARTYRDOM OF ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 

Chicago, November i, 1887. 
It will be half a century on the seventh of this month 
when Elijah Parish Lovejoy, in the free state of Illinois, 
at Alton, became the proto-martyr to the freedom of the 
press and the freedom of the slave in our country. I have 
in hand his memoir, written by his brothers Joseph and 
Owen, also an account of the "Alton Trials," written by a 
lawyer at that time, and a " Narrative of the Riots at Alton," 
by Rev. Edward Beecher, d.d., then president of Illinois 
College. In one of these is a picture of the stone ware- 
house at Alton, and of the mob as they were assaulting it. 
The only portrait of Mr. Lovejoy extant, a silhouette, is in 
the possession of his sister, the wife of the Rev, Henry L. 
Hammond, of this city. As the half-century memorial is 
at hand, and as a generation has come on since that event- 



294 



PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 



ful day, it may be worth while to reproduce the leading 
facts in the tragedy. 

Mr. Lovejoy's grandfather, Francis, had removed from 
New Hampshire to Maine in 1790, and his father, Daniel, 
was a Congregational minister in that state. He was 
graduated with the highest honors at Waterville College, 
in 1826, presenting at that time a poem on the " Inspira- 
tion of the Muse." This and other poems written before 
and after that date show that he had himself not a little of 
the gift of the Muse. On his departing for St. Louis, in 
1827, his farewell had these heroic strains : — 

Thy sons are noble, in whose veins there runs 
A richer tide than Europe's kings can boast, 
The blood of free men ; blood which oft has flowed 
In Freedom's holiest cause ; and ready yet to flow, 
If need should be, ere it would curdle down 
To the slow, sluggish stream of slavery. 

Arriving in that city, he fell to teaching school, and then 
to the editing and publishing of a political paper, advocat- 
ing Henry Clay for President. His prospects for political 
elevation became flattering indeed. But in January, 1832, 
under the ministry of Rev. W. S. Potts, he took upon him- 
self the yoke of Christ. He then struck for Princeton 
Seminary to study for the ministry. Licensed by a Phila- 
delphia Presbytery he supplied for a time at Newport, 
Rhode Island, and in the Spring Street Church, New 
York. But his heart was upon the west, and the 
thought of the west was upon him. Christian friends 
in St. Louis, feeling greatly the need of a religious weekly 
paper, urged him to return and become the editor of it, 
pledging him a salary of S500, and a capital of $1,200. 
And so, in November, 1833, the first number of The St. 
Louis Observer was issued. The tone was that of a Chris- 



BACK IN THE WEST. 295 

tian journal, and not of an abolition propagandist. In- 
deed, Mr. Lovejoy was not at that time in favor of imme- 
diate abolition, and was rather inclined to the colonization 
scheme. But dwelling in the midst of slavery, his quick 
sense of the right soon ripened his views to favor imme- 
diate abolition. 

Along in 1S34 a convention was proposed for amending 
the constitution of Missouri so as to abolish slavery in a 
gradual way. To this, even. The St. Louis Republican 
committed itself, and its position was used by the Observer 
to push on the anti-slavery sentiment. Meantime Mr. 
Lovejoy was urging the duty of Christian masters towards 
their slaves. He could not help denouncing the act of a 
state's attorney who had whipped a female slave nearly to 
death, and of another man who did whip the life out of a 
slave, and who, being tried, was not condemned, as negro 
testimony was not allowed in court. A case of cruelty 
had also stirred his righteous indignation. Two men, sus- 
pected of abducting slaves from Missouri, had been brought 
back and scourged nearly to death by " most respectable 
citizens," one of the suspects proving to have been totally 
innocent. Then a case of lynching had aroused his de- 
nunciation, the victim, a colored man, having been 
burned to death. And to his mind, worse than all was 
the complicity of Presbyterian elders with such things. 
The proprietors of the paper became frightened. They 
undertook to lock Mr. Lovejoy's lips. This could not be 
done. When the abolitionists were charged with favoring 
amalgamation, he could not help retorting that he saw 
evidence enough of such practice in the bleached faces of 
thousands of people upon the streets. Among those who 
begged him to desist was Dr. Potts. The mob tore down 
his office. And then, as Alton offered hira an asylum, he 
decided to remove his paper to that city. 



296 PIL GRIM'S LE TTERS. 

But no sooner was his press landed upon the wharf at 
Alton than it was seized, broken in pieces, and thrown 
into the Mississippi. Another press was secured in July, 
1836, and this was run until August of the next year, 
when it also was destroyed by the mob. A third press 
was secured and this also was soon made to follow into 
the river. The anti-slavery people being aroused, a con- 
vention was held at Alton to organize an anti-slavery 
society. The mobbites, taking advantage of the opportu- 
nity offered for free discussion, came in and perverted 
the meeting, after which the abolitionists by themselves 
organized their society. In the fall of 1837 a fourth 
press had been ordered from Cincinnati. It was to come 
by steamer and to be landed and stored in the ware-house 
of Godfrey, Oilman & Co., that Mr. Oilman being the 
father of Secretary Oilman of the Bible Society, and 
of President Oilman of the Johns Hopkins University. 
The friends had sought the protection of the mayor for 
the landing of the press. He recognized their right to 
j^rotect their property, and agreed to authorize them as 
an armed posse. About forty or fifty of them assembled 
at the ware-house for this purpose. At ten o'clock at 
night several retired, leaving thirty on guard. At three 
in the morning the boat arrived and delivered the press. 
No resistance was offered at that time except the firing 
of a few stones. The danger was thought to be over, 
and so President Beecher, who had remained over from 
the anti-slavery convention till that morning, supposing 
that there was no further need of his services, returned 
by stage to Jacksonville. On the next night only twelve 
remained at the ware-house, among them Mr. Lovejoy, 
who alternated with his brother Owen in standing guard. 
Pretty soon the mob appeared, armed with stones, guns, 



BACK" IN THE WEST. 



297 



and pistols. After they had fired two or three shots into 
the building the defenders fired back, and one of the 
mob, Bishop, was mortally wounded. Whereupon the 
rioters, reinforced from the rum-shops, put up ladders 
against the stone walls to set fire to the roof. Five of 
the defenders volunteered to come down to drive away 
the assailants and did for the time disperse them. 
Returning into the store they reloaded and came out for 
a second assault. By this time some of the rabble, 
having concealed themselves behind a pile of lumber, 
fired a volley into the assailing party, when Mr. Lovejoy 
received six balls, three in his breast, one on the left and 
one on the right side, and one in the abdomen. Turning 
quickly back into the store, he ran up-stairs and came into 
the counting-room and fell, exclaiming, " O God ! I am 
shot, I am shot ! " and expired in a few moments. 
Another one of the defenders, Mr. Weller, was wounded, 
but not fatally. When it was announced to the mob that 
Lovejoy was dead they sent up a yell of exultation, and 
swore that his comrades also should find a grave where 
they were. The mayor coming around, so far from serv- 
ing as an officer of protection, became a messenger to 
bear the terms of the mob to the beleaguered men. 
When the next morning the bloody remains of the 
martyr were being removed to his dwelling, their attend- 
ants were saluted with jeers and scoffs. It was here that 
Owen Lovejoy, over the body of the martyred brother, 
took his vow of ceaseless opposition to that great criminal, 
the slave-holding system. On Thursday, the ninth of 
November, 1837, just thirty-five years from the day of 
his birth, the proto-martyr was borne to his grave. His 
devoted wife, whom he had married at St. Charles, Mo., 
and who with her husband had been mobbed in that 



298 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

town, was not at home at the time of his death, having 
left the city in deHcate health to avoid the continual 
alarm. When informed that he had been killed she fell 
down senseless, "trembling," says one present, "as 
though an arrow had pierced her heart." Mr. Lovejoy 
had been moderator of the presbytery of St. Louis, and 
at the time of the murder was moderator of the presby- 
tery of Alton. 

The memoir of Mr. Lovejoy contains reports of meet- 
ings held in many cities of the north to denounce the 
crime, and also gives the spirit of the secular and religious 
press as a whirlwind of indignation. The New York 
Observer, true to itself, gave faint praise to the martyr 
of liberty. But TJie Neiv York Evangelist, under the 
grand Joshua Leavitt, and TJie Boston Recorder took the 
very highest ground. Clearly, as John Brown said of 
himself, Mr. Lovejoy was "worth more to die than to 
live." The enemies of freedom by their insane act had 
set forward the cause of anti-slavery many years. 

It v/as a travesty of justice by which the grand jury 
indicted for a riot the men who stood for the defence 
of their property and lives as well as for the freedom 
of the press. Mr. Oilman, one of the owners of the 
ware-house, and who was himself in the thick of the fray, 
was the only one of the indicted men who was tried. 
When the verdict of "not guilty" was rendered a nolle 
prosequi was entered as to the others. And so when the 
mobbites were tried under an indictment from the same 
grand jury, they too were cleared. But the jury of the 
American people long since tried and executed the 
supreme criminal, that system which made merchandise 
of the image of God. 

This semi-centennial memorial of the martyrdom of 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



299 



Lovejoy seems a fitting conclusion of this series of 
letters which have been strung upon the string of the 
anti-slavery issue. It took us a hundred years to make 
good the Declaration of Independence that all men are 
created equal. It was a weary and bloody accomplish- 
ment. By Mr. William F. Poole's volume on "Anti- 
Slavery Opinions before 1800," it appears that there were 
in the United States, before that date, sixteen abolition 
societies, of which ten were in slave-holding states. Mr. 
Poole gives Dr. George Buchanan's oration, delivered 
in Baltimore, July 4, 1791, and dedicated to Thomas 
Jefferson, Secretary of State, upon "The Moral and 
Political Evil of Slavery," at a public meeting of the 
" Maryland Society for promoting the abolition of slavery, 
and the relief of free negroes and others unlawfully held 
in bondage." I have already referred (Letter LXX) to 
the Manumission Society in Tennessee, in 1821, and 
(Letter III) to the Manumission Society of North 
Carolina, in 1830. 

But, all of that finally accomplished, we have new 
covenants to make good, the citizenship of the negro, 
his suffrage, and his Christian enlightenment. To these 
God will hold us, if it takes another hundred or a 
thousand years. The sooner the spirit and the practice 
of the accursed system of caste are put away we shall 
have enduring concord, the peace of righteousness. As 
to the method of meeting this new crisis in the anti- 
slavery cause, we can not do better than to give heed to 
the almost inspired and prophetic injunction of one who 
was a signer of the Declaration and a member of Con- 
gress, Dr. Benjamin Rush, president of the Abolition 
Society of Chestertown, Maryland, in an address sent 
out within the last century to the abolition societies of 



300 PILGRIM'S LETTERS. 

the United States. He says : " When we have broken 
his chains and restored the African to the enjoyment 
of his rights, the great work of justice and benevolence 
is not accomplished. The newborn citizen must receive 
that instruction and those powerful impressions of moral 
and religious truths which will render him capable and 
desirous of filling the varied duties he owes to himself 
and to his country. By educating some in the higher 
branches, and all in the higher parts of learning and in 
the precepts of religion and morality, we shall not only 
do away with the reproach and calumny so unjustly 
lavished upon us, but confound the enemies of truth by 
evincing that the unhappy sons of Africa, in spite of the 
degrading influence of slavery, are in no wise inferior 
to the more fortunate inhabitants of Europe and Amer- 
ica." 

The martyrdom of Lovejoy has its bearing upon our 
next great moral issue, that of temperance. This cause 
already numbers its three or four martyrs, George C. 
Haddock, the preacher. Dr. Northrop, the political organ- 
izer, the constable of Des Moines, Iowa, and Gambrell, 
the editor at Jackson, Miss. As once slavery claimed 
the right to rule the nation, so now the saloon system 
is seeking the same preeminence by throttling the politics 
of the nation. The seven hundred millions paid annually 
for the dram-bill of our country, as reported by United 
States officials, together with the hundreds of millions 
invested in this business, make a total in amount beyond 
that of the old slave-power. And this evil is right among 
us every-where, and not, as was the other, off down south 
where we could whack away at it in safety. The con- 
spiracy of the saloon interest of the "saloon statesmen" 
is as patent as was that which sought in secession to 



BACK IN THE WEST. 



301 



break down the nation. The challenge is accepted. The 
battle is set in array. Remember Lovejoy ! Remember 
Haddock, and Northrop, and Gambrell ! And may God 
give victory to the right ! 



FINIS. 



INDEX. 



A. H. M. S., 24, 55, 57, 75. 132, 152, 

249, 270. 
A.M. A., 23, 55, 75, 88, 102, 116, 132, 

150, 152, 157, 174, 195, 201, 231, 233, 

256, 263, 269. 
Abbott, Mr., 228. 
Acadians, 165. 
A. C. U., 75, 132. 
Adair, 66. 

Adams, John Quincy, 278. 
Alabama Anniversary Week, 171. 
Alabama Legislature, 96. 
Allen, Brigadier-General, 117. 
Allen, Wm. T., 12. 
Allen, Rev. Dr., 256. 
Alexander, Dr. W. S., 164. 
AUouez, Father, 123. 
Alvord, Rev. J. W., 89, 94, 99, 102, 249. 
American Board, 145, 263, 280, 281, 284, 

286. 
American Tract Society, 84, 249. 
Andrews, Rev. D., 33. 
Andrews, Prof. E. B., 32. 
Andrews, Dr. Edmund, 41, 42. 
Andrews, Rev. Dr. G. W., 160, 172. 
Anderson, Dr. Isaac, 191, 289. 
Andersonville Prison, 66. 
Andrus, Rev. E., 93. 
Anniston, Ala., 193. 
Arkansas Post, 38, 202. 
Armstrong, Gen. S. C, 174. 
Arnold, Hon. Isaac N., 117. 
Ashley, Rev. S. S., 165. 
Atlanta, Ga., 86, 156. 
Atlanta Cotton Exposition, 199. 
Atlanta University, 288, 289. 
Aunt Lizzie Aiken, 38. 
Austin, Mr., of Te.xas, 149. 
Avery, Rev. John T., 30. 

Bacon, Dr. Leonard, 77, 113, 126. 

Bacon, Lord, 47. 

Badger, Dr. Milton, 57, 81, 152. 

Baker, Rev. J. D., 33. 

Banks, Cjeneml, 38, 92. 

Baldwin, Dr. Theron, no, in, 137, 152. 

Baptist Work among l-'reedmcn, 275. 

Barbed Wire, 244, 245. 

Barber, 16. 

Barnes, Rev. H. E., 33. 

Barton, Rev. W. E., 231. 



Barrows, Dr. William, 134. 

Bartlett, Pres. P. M 192, 280, 289. 

Bascom, Dr. Flavel, 56, 172. 

Bates, of Mass., 285. 

Beard, Dr. A. F., 228. 

Beecher, Dr. Edward, 54, 121, 126, 292, 

293, 296. 
Beecher, Rev. Fred W., 113. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 46, 77, 78, 80. 
Bellows, Rev. Dr., 39. 
Beloit College, 32. 
Beman. Dr., 144. 
Berea College, 18 j. 
Biddle University, N. C, 209. 
Birmingham, Ala., 220. 
Bishop, General, 297. 
Bismarck, D. T., 146. 
Blagden, Dr., 113. 
Blakeslee, Gen. Erastus. 287. 
Blatchford, E. W., 29. 36, 64, 115. 
Bleeding Kansas, 11. 
Bliss, Rev. Charles R., 271. 
Bliss, Rev. T. E., 55. 
Blue Laws of S. C., 107. 
Bodwell, Rev. L., 55, bi. 
Booth, William, 84. 
Boston Council, 72, 78, 113, 116, 249. 
Boston Mountain, Ark., 202. 
Boston Recorder, 298. 
Boston Tract Society, 81, 93. 
Boyce, James P., 272. 
Bragg, General, 81, 84. 
Brainerd, Rev. David, 136. 
Bradford, Conn., 135. 
Brayman, General, 118. 
Breckenridge, Colonel, 199. 
Brice, Rev. Mr., 113. 
Brockway, Captain, 58. 
Brooks, Rev. Phillips, 271. 
Brooks, Preston S., loi. 
Bross, Col. John A., 57, 58, 118. 
Bross, Gov. William, 47, 58, 145. 
Brothers, Joe, 243. 
Brown, John, 21, 72, 298. 
Brown, Gov. Josejih E., 224. 
Bryan, T. B., 52, 130. 
Bryant, W. C., 244. 
Bruce, judge John, 172. 
Buck, Col. A. E., 287. 
Buchanan, Dr. (jeorge, 299. 
Buckingham, (jov. W. A., 73. 



504 



INDEX. 



Bumstead, Prof. Horace, 289. 
Budington, Dr. W. I., 132. 

Burnell, Miss Mary, 38. 

Bushnell, Rev. M., 33. 

Butler, Gen. B. F., 23, 69, 92, 174. 

Butler, Peter, 122. 

Butler, Dr., 281, 284. 

Butterfield, Pres. H. Q., 132, 13 ). ; 

Cable, George W., 206. 

Cady, C. M.. 199. 

Cain, Bishojj, 214. 

Caldwell, Rev. George, 191. 

Camp Douglas, 63, 66. 

Candee, Rev. George, 20. 

Canal at Vicksburg, 249. 

Canning, Mr. E. W. B., 290. 

Cardoza, Rev. F. L., 102. 

Carpenter's Painting, 71. 

Carpenter, Deacon Philo, 143, 145. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 271. 

Centennial, 151. 

Central Tennessee College, 179. 

Cass, Lewis, 283. 

Chapin, Pres. A. L., 31. 

Chapman, Rev. Daniel, 33. 

Chandler, Senator, 49. 

Charity for Chicago, 130. 

Chase, Bishop, 54. 

Chase, Prof. T. N., 288. 289. 

Chattanooga, 161. 

Charleston, S. C, 100, 212, 237. 

Chetlain, General, 98, 118. 

Cherokees, 280, 284, 285. 

Cherokee Missionaries, 280. 

Chicago, 125. 

Chicago Fire, 129, 132. 

Chicago Relief and Aid Society, 133. 

Chicago Theological Seminary, 72. 

Christian Commission, 68. 

Clafiin University, 261. 

Clapp, Dr. A. H., 152, 153. 

Clapp, Dr. ]. C, 236. 

Clark, Dr. Joseph, 44. 

Clark University, 260. 

Clary, Rev. Dexter, 153. 

Clay, Rev. Daniel, 167. 

Clay, Henry, 94, 167, 294. 

Clayton, Judge, 282. 

Ciendcnin, Oil. D. R., 52. 

Clifion Springs, 196, 285. 

Coaii, Dr. 'I'ilus, 136. 

Coe, Dr.JD. B.. 152. 153. 

College Society, 132. 

Colored Gentleman, 83. 

Colored Men's Heroism, 98. 

Columbus, Ky., 35. 

Colt, Mrs., 38. 



Colver, Dr. Nathaniel, 25. 

Colquitt, Gov. A. H., 200, 201, 218, 271, 

287. 

Colorado, 138, 267. 

Connecticut in Legislation, 134. 

Congregational Methodists, 194. 

Congregational Union, 75, 132. 

Confederate Memorial Day, 206. 

Concord Council, 223. 

Cook, General, 32. 

Cook, Hon. B. C, it6. 

Congregational Sunday-School and Pub- 
lishing Societv, 222, 231. 

Corliss, Mr., 176. 

Cordley, Rev. Richard. 19, 55, 61, 66. 

Corpus Christi, 168, 242. 

Cox, General, 32, 137. 

Crawford, Prolesspr, 193. 

Cravath, Pres. E. NL, 177, 214 

Creek Nation, 284. 

Creoles, 92. 

Crissey, Mr., 63. 

Crockett, David, 148, 285. 

Crozat, Anthony, 27S. 

Crogman, Professor, 200. 

Cruft, General Charles, 32 

Crum, Rev. Mr., 150. 

Currier, Judge Warren, 72. 

Gushing, Dr. C, 134. 

Custer, General, 146. 

Culler, General, 117. 

Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, 276. 

Cuyler, Dr. T. L., 196. 

Davenport, Rev. James, 135. 

Davis, lefferson, 62, 72, 102. 

Davis, Rev. J. S., 21. 

Dawes Law, 292. 

Day, Rev. S., 33. 

Day, Rev. T. L., 194. 

Dakota Indian Conference, 262. 

Dempster, Dr. John, 25. 

Dan, 246. 

Decoration Day South, 187. 

De Tocquevillo, 134. 

Dexter, Dr. W. M., 73, 127. 

Dickinson, Anna, 51. 

Dickinson, Rev. Jonathan, 135. 

Dill, Rev. J. H., 33. 

Dix, Miss Dorothy, 173. 

Dodge, Rev, B., 232. 

Dodge, Professor, 226. 

Dodge, William IC, 271. 

Doolittle, Senator, 31. 

Douglass, Fred, 92, 200. 

Dt)vv, 16. 

Driver Drunk, 204. 

Duluth, 140. 



INDEX. 



305 



Duncan, of Illinois, 285. 
Dunn, Rev. R. C, 113. 
Dunning, Dr. A, E., 220, 231. 

Eastman, Hon. Zebina, 31. 
East Tennessee, 190. 
Eddy. Dr. T. M.. 25, 118. 
Edgefield, S. C, loi. 
Elizabeth, N. J., 135. 
Elliott Brothers, 21. 
Ellis, Mr., 144. 

Ellsworth, of Connecticut, 285. 
Emancipation Day at Atlanta, 159. 
Emigrant Aid Society, 13, 15. 
Emery, Rev. S. H., 33. 
England, 76. 
Evangeline, 165. 
Evans, Dr. C. A., 218. 
Evanston Biblical Institute, 32. 
Everett, Edward, 285, 286. 
Everts, Dr. W. W., 25. 

Fairchild, General, 117. 

Fairchild, Pres. E. H., 182, 226. 

Fairfield, Rev. M. VV., 113. 

Fallows, Brigadier-General, 117. 

Farragut, 38. 

Farrar, Canon, 220. 

Farwell, J. V., 112. 

Fee, Rev. John G., 21, 182. 

F. F. V.'s. 107. 

Finney, Pres. C. G., 32, 131. 

First Woman's Missionary Society, 257. 

Fisk, Gen. C. B., 59, 83, 84, 106, 177, 

214. 
Fisk University, 177. 
Foote, Commodore, 36. 
Foote, Hiram, 117. 
Foote, Horatio K., 117. 
Foster, Dr. Henry, 196. 
Fort Abraham Lincoln, 146. 
Fort Brady, 33. 
Fort Crawford, 33. 
Fort Dearborn, 33, 144. 
Fort Gillem, 178. 
Fort Howard, 33. 
Fort Pillow, 56, 58. 
Fort Smith, Ark., 202. 
Fort Sully, 142. 
Fort Sumter, 238, 283. 
Fort Wright, 36. 
Fortress Monroe, 23, 173, 254. 
France, 76. 

Francis, Prof. C. W., 200, 289. 
Freedman's Savings Bank, 89. 
French, Rev. M., loi. 
Frelinghuysen, Theodore, 285. 
Fry, Gen. S. S., 32. 



Gaines, General, 280. 

Gambrell, Editor, 300. 

Garden, Alexander, in. 

Garrison, W. L., 92. 

Gemmel, Rev. George B., 53. 

Georgia Chain Gang, 279. 

Georgia Prison, 279. 

German Reform in North Carolina, 233, 

234- 
Gifford, John, 116. 
Gilman, Pres. D. C, 271, 273, 296. 
Gilman, of Alton, 298. 
Gilman, Secretary, 296. 
Gilmer, Camp, 281. 
Glass, Peter, 68. 
Glenn Bill, 287. 
Glidden, Mr., 201. 
Godfrey, Gilman & Co., 296. 
Goliad, Texas, 170. 
Goodell, Dr., 194. 
Goodrich, Hon. Grant, 25. 
Gookins, Hon. S. B., 25. 
Gordon, Prof. W. L., 239. 
Gordon, Governor, 288. 
Grand View, Tenn., 228. 
Grady, Editor, 287. 
Grant, Rev. )oel, 33. 
Grant, Gen." U. S., 38, 39, 69, 87, 118, 

249. 
Gray, Joseph, 49. 
Greeley, Horace, 124, 140. 
Green, Rev. J. S., 254. 
Greensborough |ail, 19. 
Griffith, Sergeant J. E., no. 
Grinnell, Hon. J. B., 125. 
Gubernatorial (Jolgotha, 18. 
Guernsy, Rev. Jesse, 152. 
Guild, Rev., 66. 
Gilded Deadfall, 151. 
Guilford, Conn., 135, 136. 
Gwinnette Co., Georgia, 282. 

Hall, Dr. Charles, 152. 

Hall, Rev. C. L., 263. 

Haddock, Rev. George C, 300. 

Hamilton, General, 117. 

Hammond, Col. C. G., 56, 73. 

Hammond, Rev. Henry L., 293. 

Hampton Institute, 173, 254. 

Hannibal, Mo., 59, 65. 

Hanks, Mr., 72, 

Harlow, Rev., 66. 

Harper's Ferry, 21. 

Harris, Gov. 1. G., 84. 

Harvey, Governor, 117. 

Haven, Pres. E. O., 128. 

Haven, Bishop Gilbert, 157, 259, 261. 

Hawley, Rev. Z. K., 37, 38. 



3o6 



INDEX. 



Hayes, Ex-Pres. R. B., 271. 

Haygood, Dr. A. G., 214, 249, 272. 

Helper's Impending Crisis, 20. 

Henry, Patrick, 107. 

Henshaw, Mrs. Sarah Edwards, 118. 

Hickok, Professor, 106. 

Hill, Gen. B.A., 285. 

Hitchen, Rev. G., 91. 

Hitchcock, President, 114. 

Hobart, Brigadier-General, 117. 

Hoge, Dr., 177. 

Hoge, Mrs., 38, 70. 

Hopkins, Dr. Mark, 175. 

Hosford, Major, 66. 

Howard, Dr., 93. 

Howard, Gen. O. O., 83, 92, 94, 159, 192. 

Howard, Rev. R. B., 89. 

Hoyt, 16. 

Hubbard, Gordon S., 145. 

Huguenots in South, 212. 

Humphrey, President, 136. 

Humphrey, Dr. S. J., 125, 284. 

Huntsville, Ala., 87. 

Hurlbut, General, 118. 

Hyatt, 16. 

Hyde, Dr. J. T., 128. 

lapi Oaye, 143. 

Ilhnois College, 32. 

Indians at Hampton, 175. 

Industrial, 176. 

Interval of Silence, 151. 

Indian Language in Indian Schools, 

293- 
Ireland's Grievance, 244. 
Itineracy of Pilgrim, 239. 

Jackson, Gen. Andrew, 232, 283. 

Jackson, Miss., 90. 

Jacobs, B. F., 164. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 113, 276, 278, 299. 

Jenney, Rev. E., 33. 

Jessup, M. K., 272. 

Jewett, Dr. Charles, 46. 

Jewett, M. T., 84. 

Johns Hopkins University, 273, 296. 

Johns, of Delaware, 285. 

Johnson, Pres. Andrew, 69, 74, 100, 112, 

" 116. 

Jones, John, 21. 

[ones, L. )., 195. 

Jones, Ottawa, 16. 

Jubilee Singers, 131. 

Kansas City, 55. 
Keeler, Rev. Kir., 113. 
Kendrick, William, 20. 
Kent, Rev. Erastus, 152. 



Kimball, H. I., 199. 
Kingsbury, Rev. Cyrus, 280. 
Kings Mountain, N. C, 212. 
Kinney, Miss Rose M., 37. 
Kirby, Sujierintendent, 152. 
Kirk, Dr., 80. 
Kitchel, Dr. H. D., 44. 
Knowles, Mrs. L. J., 249. 
Knox College, 32. 
Knoxville, Tenn., 86. 
Kokomo, 48. 

Lane, General, n, 14. 

Langworthy, Dr. I. P., 134. 

Larned, E. C., Esq., 43. 

Lathrop, Rev. S. E., 228, 238,287. 

Lawrence, Kansas, 60. 

Le Compton, 17. 

Lee, Gen. Robert E., 67. 

Lamar, Dr. J. G., 191. 

Le Moyne, Dr., 162. 

Lewis, General, 287. 

Libby Prison, 66. 

Lincoln, Pres. A., 25, 31, 55, 57, 62, 63, 

68, 72, 82, 104, 122, 159. 
Little Tad, 70, 71. 
Litts, Rev. P., 91. 
Livermore, Mrs., 70. 
Livingston Hall, 214. 
Lockwood, Rev. L. C, 23. 
Logan, General, 118. 
Loomis, Rev. Samuel, 208. 
Looniis, Prof. L. M., 208. 
Lone Star State, 147. 
Louisiana Sunday-school Convention, 

163. 
Louisiana Purchase, 278. 
Love, Dr. W. D., 117. 
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 53, 293, 296, 297, 298, 

300. 
Lovejoy, Rev. Daniel, 294. 
Lovejoy, Francis, 294. 
Lovejoy, Joseph, 293. 
Lovejoy, Owen, 49, 51, 53, 293, 296, 297. 
Lum, Rev. S. Y., 11, 13. 
Lumpkin, Governor, 284. 
Lyman, \V. R., 164. 
Lynch, James, 101. 

Madison, Pres. James, 280. 
Mammoth Cave, 81. 
Manumission Society of North Caro- 
lina, 20. 
Manumission Society of Tennessee, 192. 
Mardi Gras, 163. 
Marietta College, 32. 
Marsh, T. J., 13. 
Marsh, Rev. Mr., 19. 



INDEX. 



507 



Marshall, Chief Justice, 283. 
Maryville College, Tennessee, 289. 
Mason, Lowell, 105. 
Massie, Dr. James W., 76. 
Mattison, Rev. D., 33. 
Matfoon, President, 209. 
McClernand, General, 41, 118. 
McCoy, Rev. D. C, 126. 
McCampbell, Rev. Mr., 191. 
McDaniel, Rev. S. C, 195. 
McClean, Dr. R. G., 40. 
McPherson Barracks, 158. 
McTyeire, Bishop, 214. 
McVicker, Pres. Peter, 66. 
Medill, [oseph, 30. 
Memphis, Tennessee, 162. 
Menefee, Alfred, 84. 
Merriman, United States Senator, 189. 
Merrill, Superintendent, 152. 
Methodist Work,among Freedmen, 216, 

259- 
Mills, Rev. Samuel J., 136. 
Minneapolis, 141. 
Misseldine, Rev. A. H., 237. 
Missionary Ridge, 85, 284. 
Missionaries Ostracized, 210. 
Mississippi Legislature, 90. 
Mississippi River in F"lood, 207. 
Missionary Tour in Connecticut, 134. 
Monod, Rev. Theo., 76. 
Monroe, E. B., 174. 
Monroe, Pres. James, 280. 
Moody, D. L., 113, 164. 
Moore, Sec. \V. H., 134. 
Morgan, Dr. John, 21. 
Morgan Raid, 23, 48. 
Morrill, Rev. S. S., 33. 
Morris, Mrs. Martha, 265. 
Morris , Rev. E., -^j,. 
Mountain Work, 226. 
Mount Gilead, Ohio, 12. 
Mulligan, Colonel, 57, 118. 
Myers, Rev. A. A., 226, 228. 

Napier, Captain, 123. 

Napoleon, 278. 

National Cemeteries, 184. 

Natchez, Miss., 91. 

Negroes in the New Orleans F.xposi- 

tion, 246. 
Negroes' Newspapers, 102. 
Nelson, Colonel, 282. 
Newark, N. J., 135. 
New Ainstcrdam, 135. 
New Britain, Conn., 175. 
New England, 34. 
New England Zone, 44. 
New England Church, Chicago, 131. 



New Iberia, La., 165. 
iNevv Orleans, 163. 
Newman, Dr., 93. 
New York Evangelist, 298. 
New York Observer, 298. 
New West Commission, 270. 
Nettleton, Rev. Asahel, 136. 
Neuces River, 245. 
Noble Brothers, 194. 
Noble, Dr. F. A., 194. 
North and South. — Things in Com- 
mon, 2H. 
Northern Michigan, 149. 
Northern Pacific, 146. 
Northrup, Prof. Cyrus, 214. 
Northrup, Dr., 300. 
Norwich, Conn., 79. 
Nova Scotia, 76. 
Nullification, 283. 

Oak Park, 130. 

Oberlin, 32. 

Oberlin Council, 131, 178. 

Oglesby, General, 64, 118. 

Ohio River, 137, 138. 

Old Indian Experiment, 290. 

Old Hickory, 2S3. 

Olmsted, Fred, l^avv, 39. 

Oneidas, 291. 

Orient Hotel, 183. 

Otis, Hon, L. B., 25, 29. 

Paine, General, 99. 

Paine, Brigadier-General, 117. 

Painter, Prof. C. C, 214. 

Palmer, Dr. Benjamin, 238. 

Palmer, Dr. B. M., 93, 164. 

Palmer, General, 32, n8. 

Paris, Texas, 149. 

Parker, R. D., 19. 

Pattenburg, 41. 

Patton, Dr. Wm. W., 24, 25, 30, 36, 45, 

50, 68. 
Payne, Bishop, 238. 
Peabody Fund, 272. 
Peake, Mrs. Mary E., 24. 
Pease, Captain, 99. 
Perkins, Rev. George W., 145. 
Peters, Dr. Absalom, 136, 152. 
Pennsylvania Company, 154. 
Petrie, Dr., 172. 
I'hillips, 16. 

Pierce, Rev. W. G., 33. 
Pike, Rev. G. D., 179, 214. 
Pilgrim's Rest, 114. 
Pittsburg Landing, 35. 
i'leasant Hill, Tenn., 228. 
I My mouth Rock, 250th Year, 126. 



3o8 



INDEX. 



Poole, A. M., 155. 

Poole, \V. F., 299. 

Porter, E. Payson, 164. 

Porter, Dr. Jeremiah, 33, 37, 38, 112 

136, 145. 
Pope, Rev. G. S., 228, 231. 
Pope, General, 32, 36. 
Potts, W. S., 294, 295. 
Powell, Ur. James, 227, 237. 
Pratt, Rev. C. H., 65. 
Post, Rev. T. M., 44, 55, 56, 72, 127. 
Presbyterian Negro Missions, 208. 
Princeton College, 135. 
Price, Gen Sterling, 59, 66. 
Proctor, Mr., 281. 

Prohibition in North Carolina, 188. 
Pyrn, Dr., 93. 

Quantrell's Raid, 60. 
Quint, Dr. A. H., 77. 

Raleigh, Dr. Alexander, 76. 

Randolph, 17. 

Rankin, Rev. A. L., 33, 88. 

Ransom, General, ii8. 

Read, Superintendent, 150. 

Renville, Rev. John B., 262. 

Revolutionary Soldier, 64. 

Reynolds, Gen. J. J., 32. 

Rice, Rev., 66. 

Richardson, J. C., 20, 228. 

Richardson, Rev. William, 208. 

Richmond, Va., 67, 79, 103, 107, 113. 

Riggs, Rev. A. L., 141, 203. 

Riggs, Rev. C. B., 230. 

Riggs. Dr. S. R.. 141. 

Riggs, Rev. T. L., 142, 263. 

Rob Roy, 65. 

Roberts, 16. 

Robbins, Capt.iin A. J. C, 231. 

Robbins, Ernii', 231. 

Robbins, of Rhode Island, 285. 

Robbins, Tennessee, 231. 

Robertson, Rev. Mr., 284. 

Robinson, Governor, 13. 

Robinson, Rev., 66. 

Rockhold, Mr., 20. 

Rogers, Rev. J. A., 21. 

Roger Williams Colle<i;e, 179. 

Romeyn, Captain, 175. 

Ross, Dr. F. A., 87. 

Roy, Aaron D., 11, 61. 

Roy, Charles A., 184. 

Roy, Rev. Jos. li., 31, 43, 132, 228, 238. 

Ruger, General, 117. 

Rush, Dr, Benjamin, 299, 

Ryder, Rev. C. J., 228. 



Salisbury, Pres. Albert, 278. 

Saloman, General, 117. 

San Antonio, Texas, 168, 219. 

Sandwich Islands, 174. 

Sanitary Fair, 49, 71. 

Sanitary Commission, North-west, 36, 

44. 
Sanitary Commission, United States, 34, 

39. 45. 49- 
Santee Agency, 142. 
Savage, Dr. G. S. V., 45, 81, 128, 249. 
Savannah, 102, 212. 
Saxton, General, loi. 
Scotield, Rev. W. C, 33. 
Scott Co., Tennessee, 231. 
Scott, Dred, 12. 
Scott, Gen. Winfield, 144, 285. 
Scuddcr, Dr. H. N., 125. 
Schurtz, Gen. Carl, 117. 
Shedd, Dr. |ohn H., 209. 
Sheffield, Rev. D. Z., 126. 
Shelby Iron Works, Alabama, 161. 
Sherman, Gen. W. T., 38, 94, 102, 163. 

191. 
Sherman, Texas, 149. 
Shepherd, Ella, 214. 
Sherwood, Ex-Governor, 230. 
Sherwood, Tennessee, 230. 
Shomber, Mr., 16. 
Shurtleff College, 32. 
Skinner, Hon. Klark, 25, 36. 
Slater Fund Appropriations, 274. 
Slater, John F., 249, 271. 
Slater, William A., 272. 
Slavery Idolized, 210. 
Small, Robert, 102. 
Smith, Rev. E. F., 147, 177. 
Smith, Gov. of New Hampshire, 175. 
Snow South, 188. 
Soldiers of Congregational Churches 

in the West, 107. 
Solomon, 243. 
Southern Churches and the Negroes, 

216. 
Spence, Prof. A. K., 214. 
Sprague, of Maine, 285. 
Stage Drivers, 140. 
Stanton, Secretary, 30. 
Starkweather, Brigadier-General, 117. 
Steele, Prof. A. J., 162, 163. 
Stevens, Rev. J. D., 141, 263. 
Stewart, John A., 271. 
.St. Joseph, Mo., 59, 122. 
St. Louis Republican, 295. 
St. Charles, Mo., 297. 
Stone, Mrs. Valeria G., 180. 
Stockbridge Indians, 290. 
Storrs, Dr. R. S., 80. 



INDEX. 



309 



Storrs, S. D., 19, 66. 

Storrs School, Atlanta, 158. 

Storrs, of New York, 285. 

Strieby, Dr. M. E., 55, 56, 132, 134, 177, 

214, 236. 
Strieby, Frof. William, 268. 
Strong, Rev. James W., of Corpus 

Christi, 241. 
Sturtevant, Pres. J. M., 55, 56, 121, 194. 
Sturtevant, J. M., Jr., 59, 74, 113. 
Sugar-making, 165, 166. 
Sumner, Charles, 92, loi. 
Supreme Court, United States, 155. 
Surgery in the Army, 42. 
Svvayne, Gen. Wager, 100. 

Taft, Rev. Rufus, 231. 
Tade, Rev. E. O., 88. 
Taney, Chief Justice, 12. 
Talladega College, 160. 
Tappan, Arthur, 80. 
Tappan, Lewis, 80. 
Tarbox, Dr. Increase, 112, 113, 134. 
•Taylor, Dr. N. VV., 136. 
Terre Bonne, La., 167. 
Terre Haute, Ind., 48. 
Terry, General, 105. 
Texarkana, Texas, 244. 
Texas School Fund, 148. 
The Planter, 102, 103. 
Theological Seminary, Chicago, 72, 128, 

145- 
Thomas, Colonel, 98. 
Thomas, Gen. George H., 106, 107. 
Thompson, Colonel, 262, 203. 
Thompson, Dr. Joseph P., 73, 12S. 
Thompson, Rev. ^L, 239. 
Thornwell, Dr., 93. 
Thurston, Rev. David, 80. 
Tompkins, B. W., 126. 
Toombs, Senator Robert, loi. 
Tougaloo, Miss., 249. 
Transfer South, 151. 
Transfer back West, 252. 
Turner, Rev. E. B., 65, 267. 
Trott, Mr., 281. 
Tuscaloosa, Ala., 216. 
Tyler, General, 194. 
Tyler, Missionary, 134. 
Tyler, Pres. John, 24. 

Uncle Tim, 64. 
Unkarring, 291. 

Vallandigham, C. L., 62. 
Xanderbilt University, J78. 
\',ui Ilorne, 86. 
\'an Lew Family, 107. 



Vaughan, Dr. Robert, 76. 

\'estal, Rev. Alfred, 20. 

X'lcksburg, 38, 41, 88, 93. 

N'irginia I^egislature, 107. 

" Virginia Negroes For Sale," 92, 247. 

X'irginia Flag, 52. 

Waite. Chief Justice M. R., 271. 

Waldo, Rev. L. F., 121. 

Wales, 76. 

Walker, Charles, Esq., 25. 

W^allace, Governor, 118. 

Wallace, Gen. Lew, 32. 

Wallace, Sir William, 35, 39. 

Ward, Dr. W. H., 227, 236. 

Ward, Pres. Joseph, 143. 

Ware, Pres. E. A., 28S. 

Warren, Bishop, 261. 

Warren, Rev. Lerov, 150. 

Warren, Dr. L P., 81, 88, 249. 

Warriner, Dr. H. A., 39. 

Washburn, General, 117. 

Washington, Gabriel, 243. 

Washington, George, 28, 65. 

W'aterbury, Conn., 136. 

Waterville College, 294. 

Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 

218. 
Walker, Dr. G. W., 235. 
Wells, Ralph, 164. 
Wentworth, Hon. John, 43. 
Wesleyans in North Carolina, 233. 
Western War Books, 117. 
Whateley, Judge, 95. 
West Virginia, 136. 
Wlieaton College, 32, 145. 
Wheeler, General, 190. 
Whipple, Sec. George, 80. 
White, George L., 178. 
White, Dr. O. H„ 214. 
White River, 39. 
Whitefield, George, iii. 
Whiting, Rev. J. L., 126. 
Whittier, J. G., 96. 
Wild, General, 101. 
Willcox, Dr. W. H.. 180. 
Williams, Dr. E. F., 131. 
Williams, Rev. E. S., 254. 
Williamsburg, Ky., 226, 227. 
Williamson, Rev. John P., 141, 263. 
Williamson, Dr. T. S., 141, 263. 
Willard, Miss Frances Iv, 217. 
Wilson, HoTi. John M., 25. 
Wise, Governor, 137. 
Wirt, William, 282. 
Woman's Work for Woman, 253. 
Woodbine, 227. 
Woodbridge, N. J., 135. 



3IO 



INDEX. 



Woodstock Iron Co., 193. 
Wool, General, 23. 
Worcester, Rev. S. A., 281, 284. 
Worth, Rev. Daniel, 19, 20, 233. 
Wight, Richard R., 159. 
Wriglit, Rev. S. G., 33, 91. 
Wright, Rev. W. B., 68. 



Yates, Gov. Richard, 34, ri8. 
Y. M. C. A. of Chicago, 113. 
Y. M. C. A. Dakota Indian, 263. 
Yerrington, Colonel, 98. 
Yorktown, Va., 212. 



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